No. 350: "USP <EM>Sí</EM>! ISP No!"
On Tuesday the
U.S. Postal Service announced that it's done something for the fifth
consecutive year. What?
Send
your answer by noon ET Thursday to [email protected].
Tuesday's Question
(No. 349)--"Whose Deal?":
This year 10 million free online holiday greeting cards have
been sent via Bluemountain.com. About a million of them have something in
common. What?
"A
swastika."-- Evan Cornog
"Dear
New York State Registered Voter, As first lady ..."-- Brooke Saucier
"A
cuss word is written on the knob of Billy Ripken's baseball bat."-- Matt
Sullivan
"Nine
million Bluemountain.com users opted for the young, skinny Jesus, but around 10
percent of users went for the 'fat Jesus.' "-- Tim Carvell
"That
goddamned hamster dance."-- Matt Heimer
Click
for more answers.
Randy's Wrap-Up
News Quiz participants
scorn not just electronic greeting cards, but all greeting cards as prepackaged
expressions of sentiment for the emotionally illiterate. But isn't that a good
thing, meeting a real American need, much as do village scribes in rural India?
No. Not to orthodox quiz participants, for whom greeting cards are to genuine
manifestations of feeling what Big Macs are to real hamburgers, with some sort
of joke about Hallmark and bulimia--and an ugly image that would be, if only I
had the wit to express it. (Why isn't there a card!) Perhaps the crime isn't
that cards are prepackaged but that they are false--the impersonal disguised as
the personal, a mere pretense of affection, like corporate gift-giving,
particularly when the company passes out prostitutes who, I'm told by corporate
insiders, only pretend to like you. (And which will not be offered after the
Mobil Exxon merger. At least not to gay employees: Nothing judgmental, it's a
cost-cutting thing.) Or perhaps it's merely a matter of quality. No one seems
to mind a nice pre-written Shakespeare sonnet, and that's why I'm going to send
one out just for you. Because I--wadda ya call it--love you. Happy
holidays.
Randy's Personal
Apology to Michael Mannella's Mother
"Never
mind your question. Here's my question: if 'Michael Manella Speaks for Us All,'
why the hell can't we spell his name right? You're upsetting my
mother!"-- Michael "M-A-N-N-E-L-L-A" Mannella
iChristian, iJew,
iCaramba Answer
About a million of these electronic cards feature
an interfaith greeting, mostly Judeo-Christian holiday cheer--Santa in a
yarmulke, a reindeer with menorah antlers, that sort of nonsense.
Purists demurred, acting out their predictable
roles in the holiday drama. "It is mistaken and misguided to synthesize the
distinct symbols of our two traditions," said Dr. Christopher Leighton,
executive director of the Institute for Christian and Jewish Studies and, I'm
guessing, not a medical doctor, but a guy who appreciates an honorific.
"It is a terrible sign of intellectual and
religious confusion," carped Elliott Abrams, author of Faith or Fear: How
Jews Can Survive in a Christian America . "Each of these religions must
remain an immutable hodgepodge of customs, superstitions, and prejudices," he
did not add.
Also available, Jewish Christmas-tree ornaments--a
dreidel, a Mogen David--none of which includes the cheery holiday message: "I'm
hedging my bets with the Lord."
Also unavailable, a card showing a couple of
Macabees beating the hell out of a yeshiva boy, just like real Christians.
About half of all
American Jews intermarry, up from 10 percent in 1970. "And they're all going to
hell," Abrams did not declaim, "to the extent that we real Jews have a hell,
which isn't much. Not like I'm jealous of the Christians or anything. They've
got hell, but we've got Barbra Streisand."
Larry Amoros'
Heard at Joey Adams' Funeral Extra
"Gee, I guess Gene Baylos'll have to drool on Cindy, now."
"Poor Cindy Adams; second husband she's buried. First John Quincy, and now
this."
"Thank God the Post still has Andrea Peyser!"
"Of course he's in hell--he's a friar."
"Only in Mount Hebron, kids. Only in Mount Hebron."
Superfluous
Extra
Mix and match. Below, a list of things John McCain
says are unnecessary for our national defense, and a list of things Judge
Franklin R. Weissberg of New York State Supreme Court says are unnecessary for
the emotional well-being of a young child. But which is which?
1. The C-130 cargo plane, the B-2 bomber, the
Seawolf submarine.
2. Private jets, yachts,
obsequious staffs, pandering guests.
Answer
1. Unnecessary for national defense.
2. Unnecessary for
emotional well-being of young child.
Least-Believable
Assertions Ongoing Extra
Patricia Duff: This has never been about money.
(Or so the petulant divorcée claimed when Judge
Weissberg rejected her request for monthly child-support payments of $132,000
from former husband Ron Perelman, ordering her to scrimp by on $12,825 a month
for their 4-year-old daughter, Caleigh. His income is between $40 million and
$60 million a year; hers is about $2.4 million.)
Participants are invited
to submit similar credulity-straining claims--fact or fiction, actual or
invented, drunk or disorderly. Replies to run Monday.
Common
Denominator
Online porn + Our unreliable ISP = The Christmas
that never was.
