After being sculpted for The Lord of the Rings, New Zealand is being turned into Narnia for the upcoming film adaptations. Reports are now circulating that New Zealanders are undergoing permanent cosmetic surgery to turn themselves into orcs, elves, fairies, and dwarfs to get work on the steady influx of fantasy film adaptations.
Author / DrMabuse
Low SAT Scores — Rallying Point for Underachievers
Sample SAT scores from the elite:
The Rev. Bob Edgar: 730 (out of 1600)
Drea de Matteo: 800 (for the whole test)
Paul Wellstone: Well below 900
Career Center Specialist Robin Roth: 950
Amy Tan: Somewhere below 1,200
George W. Bush: 1,206
Al Gore: 1,355
Bill Bradley: 485 on verbal, and who knows on math?
As for me, well, the one time I took the SAT (the one time I could afford it, because as a teenager, I had to pay for it out of my own pocket), I figured back then I didn’t do very well. But at least I scored higher than George Bush and Amy Tan. What’s interesting, however, is that I did so-so on the verbal, but aced the math.
The Next Ford Story Will Feature Spitting, A Baseball Bat, and a Catherine Wheel
Birnbaum talks with James Wood and Wood offers possibly one of the most astute explanations for why Richard Ford’s short stories pale in comparison with his novels: “I found too often that Ford relies on a moment of male violence to create the form to his stories, to close them off. Somebody hitting somebody. The last one that was in the New Yorker, somebody driving their car over aI suppose the Chekhovian ideal, its not quite that nothing should happen in a story because actually Chekhovs stories are full of deaths and births and all sorts of tragedies. Ill put it this way: When Virginia Woolf read Chekhov she said something like, ‘The emphasis falls on such unexpected places so that you hardly realize that it is an emphasis at all.’ And thats what I very much love about Chekhov is this extraordinary subtlety and unpredictability. That the sentimental moment [pauses] is always avoided, just at the last second. So I find in Fords stories the emphasis falls too sharply and obviously, often on violence. But he is a fine writer, there is no doubt about that.”
There He Is, Mrs. America
A Special Slate Diary by Chewbacca
Translated from the Wookie Language
For 28 years the judges in the Mrs. America Paegant have awarded a tiara to strange attractive humans who happen to speak English. I’ve never understood this. I understand Han Solo’s endless kvetching, even when he calls me a fuzzball, but not this obsession with hairless beauty. But what the hell, I like to laugh from time to time. Although I am not the hairiest Wookie on my block, I am married and I am a Wookie. So I decided to experience what it’s like to enter a beauty paegant that I had no shot at winning.
“Let the Wookie win,” they say. I suppose it’s because I’ve been around for about two hundred years. You might say I’ve picked up a few things. How to flatten an Imperial soldier, how to roar in a way that’s aggressive yet somewhat endearing. The advice that immediately applies here, particularly to holographic chess, and which might give me a leg up in this paegant is that, if you pull the other contestant’s arms out, then you have a better chance of winning.
But when I filled out the Mrs. America online application, which asked for my name, address, amount of hair on my body, I let out a roar and smashed the computer monitor.
I was almost certain to lose. For one thing, I’d probably be a lot taller than the other contestants. For another, well, with all this hair on my body, it was a bit difficult to go drag.
I decided to give the Mrs. America Paegant people a call.
“Rwarrrrrrr,” I asked in a gentle voice.
“Hello?”
“Rawwwrrrrrrrooooooorrarr,” I continued.
“Who is this? What’s your operating number?”
“Rawwwwwwwwrrrorororororrrorrrawwwrrr,” I said in my sweetest voice.
Then there was a click and the line went dead.
It’s not wise to upset a Wookie.
(Thanks to Jimmy Beck for the lead.)
El Presidente
If this transparentmove doesn’t piss you off, then ask yourself how much liberty you’re willing to give up. We had elections in November 1864 during the Civil War, in November 1918 during World War I, and in November 1944 during World War II. This “war,” or whatever you want to call it, should be no different.