So what happens if both Conan O’Brien and Jay Leno decide that they’ve been screwed by NBC and will take their business elsewhere, thank you very much? Who will take the reins at America’s Late Night Leader? For NBC, it’s time to come up with some new shows, or at least some shows that can be sold as new. Suggestions:

10. How I Met Your Brother
9. Law & Order: Wichita
8. So You Think You Can Run for President
7. As long as it has cute vampires, who cares?
6. The Sham-Wow Hour of Power
5. Olympic Classics: Summer 1988
4. How I Met Your Sister
3. Tim Russert: Defining a Century
2. The Best of Carson
1. Armenian Idol

Check your local listings for your NBC station, if it hasn’t already defected to Fox.

Stan Geiger has no problem with the Federal Pay Czar:

I like the idea of the federal government limiting compensation for executives of companies that have taken tax money. If nothing else, such a move fires a round across the bow of any executive in this country that thinks he or she can drive a company into the ground, get bailed out with gubment money, and still grab off those personal millions. Screw ‘em.

Of course, the “brain drain” argument shows up. Why, if these geniuses don’t get paid their millions upon millions, they’ll go to work somewhere else. Fine, let them quit. Let them go to work delivering pizzas. That’s where they belong.

Not so fast, Stan. If, for instance, Bank of America execs were delivering pizzas, this is what you could expect:

• Arbitrary change of toppings
• Annual fee for living on the delivery route
• A baleful look if you question the recommended 29.9 percent tip

It’s gotta be the coal mine for these guys.

We begin with a quote from Dogette:

1. Why do I do these posts with lists and numerical little bits of crap? Why can’t I just post like you’re supposed to — in coherent paragraphs of prose? The answers to these and other mysteries, in our next numbered item.

2. I lied.

Personally, I think lists are defensible as blogfodder:

1. People occasionally like to look at lists. I have a whole freaking category devoted to lists.
2. For that matter, Irving Wallace and his kids put out whole books of lists.
3. Sometimes it’s actually easier to come up with a list than a coherent paragraph of prose.
5. Provided, of course, you don’t lose count.

But hey, that’s life in Beautiful Downtown Blogdom.

News Item: The [UN] Security Council unanimously passed a U.S.-drafted resolution that endorses the eventual goal of “a world without nuclear weapons.” It lays out steps for nuclear powers to trim their arsenals, while making it harder for other nations to convert civilian nuclear programs to military ones.”

Top Ten other things the UN Security Council believes the world should be “without”:

10. The heartbreak of psoriasis
9. The Jonas Brothers
8. Temperature variations
7. Pesky bloggers
6. Billionaires, except for that Soros guy
5. Type A Taipei personalities
4. John Bolton
3. Michael Bolton
2. Anyone Adam Sandler has ever sung about approvingly
1. Parking tickets for diplomats

Gold? Platinum? Titanium? Old hat, says JPMorgan Chase:

Chase Card Services, a division of JPMorgan Chase & Co. today introduced Chase Blueprint^SM, an innovative set of features that dramatically improves the way customers can manage their spending and borrowing.

Blueprint will be available at no charge to twenty million customers using one of four leading Chase cards: Chase Freedom^SM, Chase Sapphire^SM, Slate^SM from Chase (formerly Chase Platinum), Ink^SM from Chase and other Chase business cards.

Slate? Ink? And you thought American Express (Optima, Blue, Clear) was weird. But you should see the names Chase threw away:

10. Cubic zirconia
9. Dilithium
8. Microfiber
7. Bismuth subsalicylate
6. Malevolent scum [oh, sorry, that's some other bank]
5. Platformate
4. Unobtainium
3. Macrofiber
2. Boron
1. Gypsum

Ultimately, no one will understand any of this stuff, which presumably is the whole idea.

News Item: The Tulsa 2020 Committee on Tuesday presented the City Council with the idea of the city making a bid to host the 2020 summer Olympic games.

Top Ten things that will happen before Tulsa hosts the Olympics:

10. A phone booth in Grand Island, Nebraska becomes an independent nation
9. Walmart trades the remains of General Motors to the Chinese for two pallets of paper towels
8. NBA expands to Shanghai, Guam, Tel Aviv, and Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan
7. Monument to Ted Kennedy opens at the New England Aquarium
6. The last Twitter tweet is sent; it’s a retweet
5. Chuck Norris dies, gives St. Peter roundhouse kick, returns to earth aged 22
4. Congress, fearing the wrath of voters, cuts the top marginal income-tax rate back to 50 percent
3. Bill O’Reilly embarks on his new career as a monk
2. Facebook announces its first nuclear test
1. Sally Kern and Jim Inhofe lead the OKC Pride Parade

Don’t expect all of these things to happen at once.

Genki’s “Pon Farr”, introduced (of course) at Comic-Con ‘09, is “a refreshing fragrance that is both invigorating and dramatic with light, clean top notes of citrus, blackcurrant, lotus blossom and water lily … with base notes from sandalwood, peach and mulberry.” Fifty milliliters will run you about $30, or the equivalent in Federation credits. For the men, there is, or was, “KHAAANN!”, which has sold out, although “Red Shirt” and “Tiberius” are still available.

Which makes me wonder what sort of ideas they threw away:

10. “Chanel No. 7 of 9″
9. “Tricordia” (“It’s scent, Jim, but not as we know it”)
8. “Bajoran Again”
7. “Kes in the Dark”
6. “Stages of Acquisition”
5. “Midnight Trill”
4. “Kobayashi Marooned”
3. “Cardassia” (“There are four scents!”)
2. “Jem-Hadari!”
1. “Q” [he insisted]

(First sighting at Popgadget.)

“When correctly viewed,” said Tom Lehrer, “everything is lewd.”

As always, Professor Lehrer was ahead of his time:

Seeing an article about the naughty language policies on Xbox Live generated two corollary effects:

1. The creation of this strip. Then,

2. A meditation on the feasibility of ever outrunning profanity.

A year ago, we saw a quiz thing that asked you to determine which of four odd phrases were euphemisms for sexual acts. By the time we had discovered this question, every item on the list had developed a carnal reputation. That is to say, every item. We are fast approaching a point where ordering a sandwich at a deli will land you in prison. While I’m intrigued by the dystopian undertones of this scenario, I don’t necessarily want to live under its strictures, not least of which because I tend to frequent delis.

Some of the things routinely done by bloggers, in fact, might sound perfectly filthy:

• Working on the back-end
• Refreshing the templates
• Repositioning the header
• Purging a pingback
• Redirecting the feed

If this sounds a lot like “Horrifying Clichés” by Paul Coker, Jr., as featured in Mad, well, you know my early influences.

(Seen on a trip through TJICistan.)

I promised myself I wouldn’t hang out on Twitter unless I came up with ten good reasons to justify it. I’m still not so sure about “good,” but here are ten reasons:

10. Tired of fluttering back and forth between other people’s streams
9. Wanted to see if anyone had had the temerity to swipe the name
8. Fear of becoming long-winded in my old age
7. How hard can it be if Ashton Kutcher can do it?
6. Heard there was going to be a prize for Fewest Followers
5. Consistency demonstrated in being once again several years behind the cool kids
4. No other hope of snagging a girlfriend in Argentina
3. Free extraneous links to the blogstuff
2. Thought “hashtag” was something you played at Cracker Barrel
1. Trini’s out of town for the weekend

So be it, then.

News Item: In the end, the constant jokes were just too much to take for the long-suffering residents of Butt Hole Road. And so despairing households in the suburban street in Conisbrough, South Yorkshire, decided that the road’s name simply had to change.

Top Ten rejected replacement names for Butt Hole Road:

10. Sphincter Lane
9. Open Bottom Mews
8. Procto Place
7. Derrière Way
6. Coccyx Street
5. Chocolate Bayou Road
4. Keister Court
3. Thong Path
2. Anus Avenue
1. Bill O’Reilly Memorial Highway

Our apologies to the residents of Archers Way.

News Item: Sci Fi Channel is changing its name to Syfy as it tries to move away from the genre’s association with geeks and space aliens, TelevisionWeek reports. The network will launch the new name July 7.

Top Ten Other New Network Names For Old Networks:

10. Tragedy Central
9. Olbermannet
8. VH4
7. EPSON
6. The Pleather Channel
5. USSR Network
4. Cinemin
3. C:BS
2. Slowtime
1. The WC

Check your local listings.

News Item: State Rep. Shane Jett said one exclamation point has gotten him more attention than the rest of his four-year legislative career combined. “People ask me if there aren’t more important things for me to work on,” the Tecumseh Republican said Thursday. “I am, they’re just not paying any attention to them.” Jett, as chairman of the House International Relations and Tourism Committee, introduced a bill this session to italicize the word “OKLAHOMA” on the state flag and put an exclamation point at the end. The bill also creates an official state abbreviation: OK!

Top Ten Things That Are More Important For Shane Jett To Work On:

10. End gender discrimination in access to Viagra
9. Get as many casinos as possible to relocate to Highway 9, thereby saving fuel for his constituents
8. Move Pottawatomie County line northward so people don’t think he lives in Shawnee
7. Bar all campaign funds from outside one’s own district
6. Extend the drive-thru hours at Van’s Pig Stand
5. Obtain TARP funding to buy tarp to cover bass boat
4. Change state motto from “Labor omnia vincit” to “ZOMG WE R AWESUM”
3. Pester Annie Leibovitz for photos of Joan Jett
2. Divert state Rainy Day Fund to rainmakers to address growing drought
1. See if we can’t get some of those hotshot prisoners from Gitmo sent here

(Suggested by BPD in OKC.)

Rogers State University’s athletic teams are called the “Hillcats,” which Lynn believes to be a fatuous euphemism:

Oh come now! We all know what they really wanted to call them.

The University begs to disagree, but they’d have to, right?

It should be noted that RSU came up with this tag after hiring a branding consultant, which makes me wonder what they might have done on their own. Surely they would have rejected these:

10. Claremorons
9. Damninators
8. Turduckens
7. Shuckydarns
6. Shotkickers
5. Hellenic Scholars
4. Cigar-Store Indians
3. JurassicRaptors
2. Fuchsias
1. Flying Buttresses

Suddenly, “Hillcats” sounds almost good.

News Item: General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC will get $13.4 billion in initial government loans to keep operating in exchange for a restructuring under a rescue plan announced by President George W. Bush.

Bankruptcy, said Mr Bush, was not an option. The Top Ten options that were not adopted:

10. Bob Nardelli gives away Dodge Calibers in the streets of Mumbai
9. Economic-stimulus checks good only toward the purchase of a new Pontiac (see dealer for details)
8. GM revives Oldsmobile, renames it “Obamamobile,” hopes for change in its fortunes
7. The ghost of Soichiro Honda is summoned to preside at Detroit board meetings
6. As the Iraq war winds down, Dodge Dakotas are pressed into use as patrol vehicles
5. We’re dealing like crazy! Call 1-800-BLAGOJEVICH now!
4. Worried about global warming? Come to our storage facility and kick the crap out of the SUVs
3. Knight Rider voice now available as an OnStar option
2. Have Superman drive around the world in reverse in a Chrysler Sebring
1. Develop a deadly virus that affects only retired and active UAW members

Barbara Broccoli, that is, keeper of the flame for the James Bond film series, who no doubt had something to do with this:

Avon Products, Inc. [has] announced a collaboration with the James Bond entertainment franchise, property of Danjaq LLC and Eon Productions, to create a new signature Bond Girl 007 women’s fragrance, bringing the confident allure of cinema’s sexiest icons to Avon consumers worldwide. British actress Gemma Arterton, who plays the role of Agent Fields in the upcoming Bond film, will be the face of the new fragrance. She will appear in TV and print advertising when Bond Girl 007 launches globally in October 2008 in conjunction with the worldwide release of “Quantum of Solace,” the 22nd film in the Bond franchise, which is the largest and longest running movie franchise in history.

This was announced back in May, but I didn’t notice it until Avon Campaign 23, the brochure for which has arrived on my doorstep. The 1.7-oz Eau de Parfum Spray, in a bottle with a very definite waistline, sells for $30, and they’re offering a ticket to Quantum of Solace if you actually buy one.

And of course it got me wondering just what kind of tie-in products were inspired by Bond films and somehow never made it to market. For instance:

10. Sylvia Trench coats
9. The Zippo Felix Leiter
8. Holly Goodhead hair gel
7. Bambi and Thumper dual exhausts
6. Low-cholesterol Fabergé eggs
5. Peaceful Fountain Pens of Desire
4. Lifelike Bibi Dahls
3. Male enhancement kit endorsed by Penelope Smallbone
2. Rideable Kissy Suzuki
1. [make up your own Pussy Galore joke]

Surely some of these might have sold.

Microsoft’s Mike Nash makes the announcement:

[A]s you probably know, since we began development of the next version of the Windows client operating system we have been referring to it by a codename, “Windows 7.” But now is a good time to announce that we’ve decided to officially call the next version of Windows, “Windows 7.”

The discussion over this matter, of course, was furious. The Top Ten rejected names for Windows 7:

10. Windows 6.66
9. Not Vista
8. DOS 8.0
7. [deleted pending issuance of Service Pack]
6. Windows 08SE
5. Ocelot
4. “Who cares, Apple’s gonna make fun of it anyway”
3. Really Not Vista
2. ActiveVex
1. Windows XP Service Pack 4

Because God forbid we should discourage companies from polishing up their begging bowls:

I watched part of the bailout hearings on TV while at the gym. Evan Bayh (Democratic Senator from Indiana) was asking why the taxpayer couldn’t get some equity in return for the risk. Paulson and Bernanke (Bush administration fellas) said that it would cut down participation. But … excuse me … isn’t that the point? Set the price for a bailout high enough and only folks who really need a bailout will apply. Without such a disincentive, every finance industry lobbyist in Washington will jockey for part of the $700 billion bonanza.

The Democrats, and even some Republicans, are calling for limits on executive pay as part of the bailout. With gold presumably off the table, here are the Top Ten alternate materials being considered for executive parachutes:

10. Plywood
9. Zinc
8. Osmium
7. Mercury *
6. Drywall
5. Dihydrogen monoxide
4. Depleted uranium
3. Al Gore’s presumably-superfluous winter coats *
2. Soap scum
1. Lead

* Subject to EPA regulations.

The following, reports Julie R. Neidlinger, are “things God never intended”:

• Skinny jeans on guys

• Tattooed makeup on women
• Huge spoilers bolted on the back of hilariously nonathletic-looking cars
• Women’s short-shorts in any size above 12
• Fried Oreos

Alas, my Photoshop skillz aren’t sufficiently mad for me to conjure up a picture of a guy in skinny jeans driving a slammed Mitsubishi with a wing the size of a surfboard, sitting next to his size-16 true love with the permanent mascara and the Daisy Dukes, chowing down on a cookie that used to have no trans fats.

Disclosure: I’m sorry, 12 doesn’t strike me as being all that darn big. What’s more, I was once married to a 20½. (She’s smaller these days. Or I’m bigger.)

Seems like the whole city is on tenterhooks waiting for the newly-arrived NBA franchise to get a name. Sports Illustrated’s Ian Thomsen, however, is not:

This is a ridiculous exercise in lawyering and marketing and all of the things that traditional fans hate about sports today. I personally have no interest in this topic. All of the good names are already taken. When you start giving teams names like “Devil Rays” and “Thrashers” and “Blue Jackets” — not to mention naming teams after concepts like the “Wild” or “Magic,” or giving them schizophrenic identities like the “Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim” — it means there are too many teams.

Indeed. Here are the Top Ten rejected names for the Oklahoma City NBA franchise:

10. Tenterhooks

9. Junebugs
8. Aprilbugs
7. Bisontennials
6. Times
5. Refugees
4. D-Tractors
3. Archvillains
2. Potholers
1. Bennettroids

There’s still time to pick “Scissortails,” guys.

Samples from a list of the 10 Scariest Cities in America:

Baltimore [#3] is the most rat-infested city in America. I recommend that you keep one eye open while sleeping, or you might end up with a rat’s nest in your hair.

A recent study done by Hallmark showed that El Paso [#4] has the worst sense of humor of any other place in the country. They also have the lowest greeting card sales numbers. I wouldn’t dare crack a joke in this town.

[Los Angeles — #10] The city with the largest class stratification in America, complete with plenty of slimy millionaires and tons of boob jobs. Enough said.

Let it be known that at one time I was considering a Pacific Northwest loop for a future World Tour. However, at the moment I don’t think it’s a good idea to show up anywhere near Seattle with Oklahoma plates.

Page Six is claiming that MSNBC talking heads Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann are hot to take the Meet the Press slot vacated by the late, lamented Tim Russert.

I tend to doubt this, or at least half of it: Matthews apparently told Page Six he wasn’t interested. That leaves — well, here are the Top Ten names ranking higher than Keith Olbermann on NBC’s shortlist:

10. Bill O’Reilly

9. Irving R. Levine
8. Ann Curry
7. Anyone who has ever been married to Larry King
6. Larry King
5. Omarosa Manigault-Stallworth
4. Tina Fey
3. Jim Kramer, if he takes his medication
2. Ashleigh Banfield
1. The stuffed and mounted corpse of David Brinkley

NBC, properly, hasn’t said a word.

(With thanks to JammieWearingFool.)

News Item: Republicans will counter the Democratic push for change from the years of the Bush administration with their own pledge to deliver, drum roll please, “the change you deserve.”

Top Ten political slogans rejected by the Republican Party before deciding on “the change you deserve”:

10. “Staff white people like”

9. “We pick our losing candidates early”
8. “Wingnut > Moonbat”
7. “We put the ‘Old’ in ‘Grand Old Party’”
6. “Rule 6: No Clintons”
5. “You deserve a tax break today”
4. “Our babes are hotter than their babes”
3. “Now 100% Berkeley-Free”
2. “2 Centuries 1 Idea”
1. “We’re good bad, but we’re not evil”

(Suggested by Michelle Malkin.)

Swiped from Fillyjonk, this premise (the explanation apparently originated elsewhere):

What we have here is the top 106 books most often marked as “unread” by LibraryThing’s users. As in, they sit on the shelf to make you look smart or well-rounded. Bold the ones you’ve read, underline the ones you read for school, italicize the ones you started but didn’t finish.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi: a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
The Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran: a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked: the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian: a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead (note 1)
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible : a novel
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno (and Purgatory and Paradise) (note 2)
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes: a memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States: 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-Five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake: a novel
Collapse: how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics: a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: an inquiry into values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood: a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield (note 3)
The Three Musketeers

Notes:

• How I finished Atlas Shrugged and not this is amazing.

• With apologies to Jim Steinman and/or Meat Loaf, one out of three ain’t good.
• This is David Copperfield with two Ps by Charles Dickens, not David Coperfield with one P by Edmund Wells.

And I could swear I’ve read Emma, but I can’t remember where I picked it up, so I left it off.

Update: First paragraph redone to clarify credits.

News Item: Grant Humphreys plunked down $132,400 for the high bid in a 10-day eBay auction for the Santa Monica Pier’s Ferris wheel, Jeff Klocke, marketing director for the pier’s Pacific Park, announced Friday. “I asked him what he was going to do with it. He said at this point he wasn’t 100 percent sure but he’s going to have some fun with it with his family first,” Klocke said after bidding closed at noon.

Top Ten things Grant Humphreys will not do with the Santa Monica Pier’s Ferris wheel:

10. Roll it home along Route 66

9. Trade it for White Water Bay season tickets
8. Place it at the east end of Block 42, where it will obstruct the scenic view of I-235
7. “Dear Aubrey McClendon: Let’s see you buy this!”
6. Trade it for Sonics season tickets
5. “Dear Dad: Remember that time when you wouldn’t take me to Frontier City? Nyah.”
4. Hang it on the edge of Stage Center and wait until somebody notices
3. Trade it for Blazers season tickets
2. Set it parallel to the ground, start it spinning, and watch it take out half of Myriad Gardens
1. Offer to mount it on top of Seattle’s Space Needle

Note: All its base are belong to him.

“Have you given any thought to your avatar’s carbon footprint?”

Um, say what?

That’s actually a serious question: the larger virtual worlds and MMOs require thousands of servers to run, and that expends enormous amounts of electricity.

Second Life Carbon Offset Exchange is an offshoot of carbon offset retail site 4offsets.com, and if you have a Second Life account you can visit the company’s SL headquarters (direct teleport at this link). Then if you have enough Linden Dollars, the world’s official currency, you can start buying the offsets.

I have no experience with these games, so I will take this at face value. Meanwhile, I wonder what sort of environmental changes we can expect in non-computerized games, like, oh, Monopoly:

• Engine idling prohibited on Free Parking

• Water Works faces EPA mandate to clean up stormwater drainage
• Luxury Tax superseded by Carbon Tax
• Electric Company charges variable rent based on the time of day you land on it
• Passing Go now earns $185; $15 congestion charge assessed
• Railroads switch to cleaner diesel, raise rents
• Mediterranean Avenue declared brownfield
• Race-car token replaced by bicycle

I shudder to think what might happen to Scrabble.

(Via Tim Blair.)

Coming soon to eastern Kansas, the Mustang Church of America:

Charles Ales loves Mustangs and doing good to others, so he’s putting it all together and starting the Mustang Church of America and Museum.

“There’s not another one like it in the world,” said Ales, lifelong car collector. “I’ve been around car nuts all my adult life. You can mess with their wives, you can mess with their dogs, but you can’t mess with their cars. It borders on a religion with them, so I built them a church.”

So far, the only automaker actually named after a god is Mazda.

Top Ten new religious movements of an automotive nature:

10. The Porschetarians

9. Chevrolaity
8. Seekers of Infiniti
7. Office of the Archmitsubishop
6. V-Sikhs
5. LaSallevation Army
4. Gnashticism
3. Subarutherans
2. GTOrthodoxy
1. Society of St. Prius X

Jesus, we may assume, was partial to Hondas; in Acts 2, the disciples managed to get to the first Pentecost in one Accord.

(Via the heretics at Autoblog.)

News Item: New York State Governor Eliot Spitzer has apologized amid allegations of involvement in a prostitution ring. The married father-of-three said he had acted in a way that violated his obligations to his family.

Top Ten Eliot Spitzer Excuses:

10. “I was just trying to get her a driver’s license.”

9. “I had a hunch she’d lead me to the rest of the Gambino family.”
8. “Did you know that hookers engage in price-fixing?”
7. “I was following up on Dick Grasso’s expense-account file.”
6. “Don’t screw with me. I’m a Superdelegate.”
5. “Nobody would have said a word if that goober Pataki had done anything like this.”
4. “That fink Joe Bruno is behind this, isn’t he?”
3. “There’s got to be some way to blame this on the record industry.”
2. “It’s okay, my dad paid for it.”
1. “Do you know how boring it gets in Albany?”

If anyone cares, Governor Spitzer is a Democrat.

Addendum: David Letterman did a similar list later that night. We overlap, maybe, on one item.

eBay item: “You are bidding on a framed genuine FAKE birth certificate of Barack Hussein Obama. Did I say that his middle name is Hussein? I did? Okay. Here is the fun part. Because it is apparently against the rules to use the middle name of HUSSEIN, the winning bidder will have the opportunity to choose a new middle name to replace HUSSEIN. It will be inserted in the FAKE certificate. We can begin using the name, and then we won’t have to worry about being arrested by the DemocRAT PC police for using the actual real name HUSSEIN.”

Top Ten likewise-unacceptable middle names for Barack [           ] Obama:

10. Koresh

9. Diane
8. Jacob Jingleheimer
7. Amadeus
6. Tuvok
5. Ringling
4. Anakin
3. Medici
2. Kuhn
1. Insein

(Swiped from Fausta by way of E. M. Zanotti.)

How shall we celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy? Suggestions in Comments, please.

A passel of Tufts University students have put up a blog to — well, the subtitle says it all:

A select group of America’s most brilliant students who are actually getting academic credit (if not a stellar grade) for goofing off on this blog.

One post so far, from “The Minions,” who advise:

Remember that one of the goals of this project will be to generate traffic from other blogs and from web surfers. Therefore, a name that attracts interest or curiosity is more advantageous than something generic.

As an example, you might find it amusing that one blog that enjoys significant traffic is called “This Blog Is Full of Crap.”

I need hardly point out that Laurence Simon objects to his traffic being called “significant.” Still, the name for this new enterprise is indeed critical, and to show that I have a heart, I offer an even number of half-hearted suggestions:

• The Huffington Pissed

• 19-Year-Old Women With Large Breasts
• Like Glenn Reynolds, But Without Saying “Heh”
• We Thought They Were Saying “Woo-burn”
• Carbohydrate Wisdom
• My36DD
• Bin Laden, Done That
• Duncan Hunter Read This Once
• Panic! At The Bursar’s
• 20-Year-Old Women With Large Breasts

You’re very welcome.

Update: They’ve tweaked a few things, including the tag line, which now contains the phrase “wait till Dad finds out”, and The Minions have given way to The Perfessor.