By: The Fubar Journalist

As you may have noticed, airport screening measures have increased since the “underwear bomber” was arrested on December 25 at Detroit’s international airport.

Several clever Republicans bravely recommend all Muslims be profiled for special, more stringent flight screening. You know, cause non-Muslims never do anything wrong with airplanes.

But is this enough? Are they aware of the latest threat? Beware the most recent al Qaeda terrorist innovation: the anal cavity bomber.

It doesn’t sound plausible until you put on your swim shorts and jump head first down that slippery slope of logic.

Yup, your poop shoot is the last convenient place to hide a bomb. First it was baggage, but they nailed that one pretty quick. After 9/11, it was your shoes. Thanks Richard Reid. An extra minute removing the shoes solved that problem.

The next two places made terrorism downright sexy. Read the full story

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While everyone else in the English-speaking world is busy compiling top 10 lists to encapsulate the essence of the last decade, we here at The Talking Mirror are forging on into the future.  We’re not concerned with who had the greatest album, athletic performance, or sexiest celebrity scandal in the past 10 years, we want to know what’s going to happen next (assuming health insurance executives, terrorists, or the Mayans don’t kill us all first). It’s true, 2010 technically “hasn’t happened yet” but we’ve never been ones to let things like facts, events, or reality get in the way of a good news story and we’re not about to start now.  And so, in a TTM exclusive, we are proud to bring you 20 headlines guaranteed to be filling newspapers and Perez Hilton’s Twitter feed over the next 12 months.  You can discount them for being made-up, far-fetched and unlikely to ever happen, but, hey, that’s good enough for 70 million Obama voters so it’s more than good enough for us.  Please enjoy responsibly.

PELOSI’S BILL FOR FEDERALLY FUNDED TOILET PAPER OPTION INCLUDES FINES FOR NOT WIPING ASS

POLL SHOWS MAJORITY OF AMERICANS DON’T TRUST POLLS

TEN MILLION CHINESE TROOPS “JUST VISITING,” SAYS OBAMA

WANDA SYKES SHOW IN SECOND SEASON – AMERICANS BAFFLED

15 MORE WOMEN, 6 MEN, 3 HORSES, 4 SHEEP, AND AN END TABLE CLAIM TO HAVE HAD AFFAIR WITH TIGER WOODS

GLOBAL WARMING NOW PERVASIVE, CATASTROPHIC; CHICAGO A TROPICAL PARADISE

CATHOLIC PRIEST CLAIMS TIGER WOODS MOLESTED HIM

OBAMA OFFERS CALIFORNIA TO CHINA AS DEBT REPAYMENT, “NO THANK YOU” THEY RESPOND

AMERICA INVADES IRAN, OBAMA WINS SECOND NOBEL PEACE PRIZE

JIMMY FALLON STILL TELLING JOKES ABOUT PRESIDENT BUSH

PALIN ANNOUNCES RUN FOR PRESIDENCY IN 2012, BABY JESUS CRIES

ILLINOIS SELLS OBAMA’S SENATE SEAT TO MARK CUBAN TO COMBAT RISING BUDGETARY DEFICIT

OBAMA BECOMES FIRST BLACK PERSON TO GIVE “STATE OF THE UNION” ADDRESS

WORLD CUP MAKES AFRICA SEEM ALMOST BEARABLE

WINTER OLYMPICS A SUCCESS, NO ONE NOTICES

FURBY ARRESTED FOR PUBLIC DRUNKENNESS, SAYS, “I USED TO BE ON TOP.”

“SEXT” RAPIST GETS DEATH SENTENCE; JURY SAYS, “C YA”

ABC’S “BIGGEST LOSER: RELAPSE” CANCELLED, AMERICA LOSES HOPE

LOST’S SMOKE MONSTER REVEALED, OBAMA TO GUEST STAR

KANYE INTERRUPTS OBAMA’S NOBEL PRIZE CEREMONY, SAYS “DESMOND TUTU WAS BETTER”

Thanks to Christian Gonzalez and Kent for contributing headlines to the list.

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I have a friend who is in the process of obtaining a student visa in order to attend an a university here in Chicago. The hoops that they require you to jump through are extensive and often ludicrous, but nothing has been quite as amusing in its absurdity as the questions on a mandatory questionnaire. I’ve included some of my favorites:

Do you have a communicable disease of public health significance such as tuberculosis (TB)?

Have you ever violated, or engaged in a conspiracy to violate, any law relating to controlled substances?

Are you coming to the United States to engage in prostitution or unlawful commercialized vice or have you been engaged in prostitution or procuring prostitutes within the past 10 years?

Do you seek to engage in espionage, sabotage, export control violations, or any other illegal activity while in the United States?
Read the full story

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Can I talk to you for five minutes about liberal bumper stickers?  Actually, I just want to talk about one.  I’ve only asked for five minutes of your time so I’ll have to save “Not my President”, “Meat is Murder”, and “The blood of New Orleans is on Republican hands” for another day.  I’m going to give up my ranting rights with those stickers to talk about another one that is more infectious than all other liberal stickers combined (probably because it has lots of pictures and only one word).  Indeed, the only thing liberals enjoy putting on their cars more than this sticker is a Subaru logo and Oregon plates.

I’m sure you’ve seen this sticker.  It was probably plastered to the ass end of a Prius outside a farmer’s market or college book store or abortion clinic in Vermont and you probably didn’t even look twice at it.  Maybe you thought it was clever.  Maybe you were dimly accepting of its message.  Well you were wrong.  It’s not clever, it’s not cute, it’s not creative.  It’s ignorant.  It also happens to be one of the three things a human being can do to make me instantly dislike them and discount everything they say from that point further:

1)      They can talk during an episode of LOST.

2)      They can say (during LOST or at any other time), “You know, George Lopez is actually pretty funny.”

3)      They can put a “Coexist” sticker on the bumper of their car.

Read the full story

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Can I talk to you for five minutes about California, or, to quote 30 Rock’s Jack Donaghy, The Gaypublic of Drugifornia?  There was once a dream that was California. You could only whisper it. Anything more than a whisper and it would vanish… it was so fragile.  At the edge of the continent, past the purple mountains and fruity plains, was to be a found a sanctuary where America’s huddled masses could forget about breathing free and indulge their true passions: fame, frappuccinos, and fornication.  This was not a state.  It was a shining beacon to beaches, bikinis, biker gangs, burritos, boob jobs, bongs, and the other cornerstones of a developed society.

Unfortunately, Californians are as bad at whispering as they are at putting out wild fires or being straight.  They peddled their dream through teen soap operas, Colin Hanks movies, and pop/punk songs to a waiting world and it died quicker than a security guard at a Raiders game.  What remains is the bombed out shell of a state that has all the charm of Miami in the 80s except with higher taxes and slightly less cocaine.

Thanks to California, we now know the answer to the age-old quandary: what would happen if 30 million addicts, war protesters, child actors and sex offenders banded together and took over a country?  What happens is a deficit of $26.3 billion, an unemployment rate of 9.3%, humans breeding with goats, and a thousand other maladies born from a populace that is heavy on opinions and light on fully-functioning brains. Read the full story

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Ah, FoxNews. I’m a conservative. I really am. And an evangelical. You’d think I’d have Glenn Beck on my TiVo, a bookshelf filled with volumes with O’Reilly on their spines, and “No F’ing Spin Zone” on my bumper. You’d be wrong, my friends.

It’s not because I wholeheartedly hate or vehemently disagree with everything FN does. On the contrary, their coverage of the ACORN debacle was significantly more comprehensive than any of the other networks commonly labeled as “liberal.” A government funded agency is advising people how to start a brothel, do it under the government’s radar, and maybe even get it funded by the government? And they’re doing it on tape? In multiple cities? How the hell is that a partisan issue? Kudos to FN for blowing the lid off of that one.

Then there are front page headlines like this one. Thanks to Kent for sending me this screenshot he took from his work computer.

Dammit, FN. Just dammit. This is why people think we’re dumb. It’s an article about how the USDA has confirmed that a pig has swineflu. That’s a front page headline on their website. How stupid this is, let me count the ways. Read the full story

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This article was originally written for www.gapersblock.com. You can see the article there also.

So I was at the post office the other day, mailing something to my special lady friend. It’s long distance so you really have to send letters and what not to keep points on the scoreboard, so to speak. I had tried FedEx and UPS, but their prices were astronomical – $60 bucks when USPS was $10 – $20.

There I was, putting some stuff in a box and filling out all the appropriate forms, when some girl came in to ship something. It was only the two of us there at the Post Office, so I could easily hear her conversation with the USPS employee. The girl was trying to pay for her purchase with a credit card that said “See I.D.” where the signature bar is on the back. The USPS employee was not down with that. You see, their policy is that you have to sign your cards. “You can sign your card right now, but we won’t take it if it’s not signed,” the employee told the young lady – the damsel in distress, you might say.

Logic isn't in their policy.

“I work at a bank,” the girl protested. “We tell all of our customers to write ‘See I.D’ on the back of their cards because it’s more secure. Your I.D. has your signature and your picture on it. It helps protect against theft.”

“Hard to argue against that logic,” I affirmed her silently in my mind. This was, after all, the same policy that I myself practiced.

“Our policy says that you have to sign the card,” the employee persisted.

“But you can just see my I.D.” the girl continued in futility.

“Ma’am you can either sign the card now or pay with cash,” repeated the error message, reminiscent of the infuriating experiences we’ve all had with some type of electronics that malfunction despite all forms of reason. The customer yielded, her white flag waving as she handed over the cash for her purchase. Her head hung low as she marched out of the building, defeated. Read the full story

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Can I talk to you for five minutes about health care?  Last night, while I was trying to find Frankie Muniz’s E! True Hollywood Story, I accidentally stumbled upon MSNBC and was deeply disturbed by what I found there.  If Keith Olbermann and the channel’s other intolerable lesbian are to believed, it seems a healthy percentage of the American populace spent the final month of their summer at community centers heaping invective on the government overlords responsible for their respective townships.  The cause of their ire is, from what I could ascertain, a strong affinity for or hatred of doctors.

For me, the MSNBC report raised two immediate questions.  One, hasn’t the invention of the television made “Town Hall” meetings obsolete? Two, isn’t it time someone punched that smirk off Rachel Maddow’s face? When I got done thinking about those questions, I thought of a third: What?

Since politics is one of the few subjects that confuse me more than the work of Tyler Perry, I usually make it a point to stay out of it and make fun of the people who care.  However, when it comes to health care, I feel I have a valuable perspective that can help clarify this convoluted issue.  During their broadcasts, I heard Mrs. Olbermann and Mr. Maddow implore their viewers to imagine what it must feel like to be one of the 40 million uninsured Americans who live each day with one foot in the Walgreens and one foot in the grave.  Well I don’t have to imagine what it’s like, I live it every day.  I am one of those uninsured Americans.  You want to know what it’s like?  It’s awesome. Read the full story

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TTM Readers: This is an article that I wrote for www.gapersblock.com As our readerbase doesn’t really overlap very well, they allowed me the opportunity to post it on TTM as well. You can see the original article with all its comments here, on Gaper’s Block.

Hey there Chicagoans. Go ahead and pause all your Kazaa, Limewire, and BitTorrent downloads for a second. I want the page to load quickly as this is something you’re going to want to read.

If you haven’t heard yet, it’s “illegal” to download music online without “paying” for it. It’s hard to believe, but being a fan isn’t accepted as legal payment anymore. They call it “piracy,” and the consequences for it can be very, very dire. Therefore, I’ve compiled a list of other crimes that I suggest you look into before you decide to download “Sweet Child of Mine” or “Poker Face.”

First, let’s look at the fines in the only two music piracy trials that have taken place to date. The first is the case of Jammie Thomas, a single mother of four from Minnesota. She downloaded 24 songs off of Kazaa. A jury of her peers decided that she owed the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) almost $2 million for her crimes, a ruling which the Obama Administration recently told a federal judge was constitutionally sound. The second is the case of Joel Tenenbaum, a young grad student at Boston University. He downloaded 30 songs and was slapped with a fine of $675,000. If the verdicts stand both will file for bankruptcy. Read the full story

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By Steve Etheridge

(SUPERMAO walks into an open courtyard. He is decked out in silver and purple, the greatest of all colors. Several young men stand attentively, discussing which animal might be his favorite. Women show humility by keeping their eyes on their feet. It is a glorious day for SUPERMAO to peacefully contemplate himself.)

SUPERMAO: Because I find my identity in a functional, superior body of citizens and have no concept of self, it seems I have forgotten my super qualities.

MAN 1: You are intelligent, industrious, and you shoot laser calligraphy from your eyes.

MAN2: You are unbelievably lifelike with your hand puppetry.

WILT CHAMBERLAIN: Your escapades virginize me. Also, you are taller than me.

(TWO DISOBEDIENT STUDENTS enter the courtyard and cause a disturbance. One’s hair exceeds the appropriate length of five centimeters, and the other looks like he might own a book.) Read the full story

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