Yes, I'm flying out on AA 1238 today, Sunday October 14th; off to visit Richard Fish at LodesTone in Bloomington, Indiana to promote Firesign Theatre product, then a drive to Goshen for a visit with my Mom and my aunt Bonnie; then to Milwaukee for Melinda's opening night on the 19th of "The Magic Fire"; and back the 23rd.
   AA 1238? Sound familiar? It's the flight that was plagued by two loonies for two days in a row. But what I'm really worried about is the crazies stated intention to target Chi-town's Sears Tower. Melinda assures me that my plane won't contain enough fuel to take it down. Like she knows.
   Well, I'm going, and I hope the Planet is still spinning after my safe return.
   Anyway, the planet will still spin.

   "Life gives more than death can take away."
- from a eulogy by Richard Green for Larry Lant

ZJUST JOKING . . .

   The year is 2021 and a man and his son are walking through New York.
   They come up on a bare space among the office buildings and the man sighs, saying "Son, twenty years ago the Twin Towers stood right there."
   The boy says, "What were the Twin Towers, Daddy?"
   "Well, son, they were two of the tallest buildings in the world. They were filled with thousands of offices and thousands of people worked there. Then one day, some Arabs flew two planes into them and brought them to the ground, destroying them."
   They stood in silence a while longer before the boy looked up at his father and asked -"What's an Arab?"
(Forwarded by Gary Gordon)

   "My Other Car Has Liver Spots" and "Hang Up And Drive"
- Bumper stickers

KIDS ON LOVE, NOT DRUGS

   "When someone loves you, the way they say your name is different. You know that your name is safe in their mouth." Billy - age 4
   "Love is when a girl puts on perfume and a boy puts on shaving cologne and they go out and smell each other." Karl, 5
   "Love is when you kiss all the time. Then when you get tired of kissing, you still want to be together and you talk more. My mommy and daddy are like that. They look gross when they kiss." Emily, 8
   "Love is when mommy sees daddy on the toilet and she doesn't think it's gross." Mark, 6
   "Love is when mommy gives daddy the best piece of chicken." Elaine, 5
   "Love is when your puppy licks your face even after you left him alone all day." Mary Ann, 4
   "I know my older sister loves me because she gives me all her old clothes and has to go out and buy new ones." Lauren, 4
   "I let my big sister pick on me because my mom says she only picks on me because she loves me. So I pick on my baby sister because I love her." Bethany, 5
   "You really shouldn't say 'I love you' unless you mean it. But if you mean it, you should say it a lot. People forget." Jessica, 8
   "When you love somebody, your eyelashes go up and down and little stars come out of you.' Karen, 7
   "If you want to learn to love better, you should start with a friend who you hate." Nikka, 6

   "A secret order of rubber nuns conduct forbidden experiments in golden wetness with captured male victims."
- Video catalogue blurb

A JOB TO DIE FOR!

   Attention, all terminal &/or manic-depressive Americans of all religions, credos, races, & color who have recently suffered overwhelming, &/or unbearable emotional distress! All heartbroken teens, Older recently divorced women and men, Terminal cancer patients, old people, and all other Americans contemplating suicide!!
   MAKE BIG BUCKS IN YOUR SPARE TIME!! GET RICH ON YOUR WAY TO THAT WORLD WITHOUT END!!

BECOME A SUICIDE BOMBER!!

   CONTACT: iwannadie.org. All you have to do is sign this release: "I'm not a terrorist - I'm just really really depressed." (No bureaucrats, politicians, or religious fanatics need apply.)

   "Inspiration? I get paid for this, guys."
- Writer Tom Clancy (rumored to own a tank)

EFFIGY BIZ SOARS!!!

   Piñatas bearing the likeness of Osama bin Laden have caused a stir in Texas The owners of "JJ's Party House" got ten bin Ladens from a Mexican supplier and they said they planned to donate profits to NY firefighters. They've sold piñatas of notorious figures before like Monica Lewinsky and Saddam Hussein. Gee, what's inside . . . anthrax?
   Then, the NY metal band Anthrax's lead singer, Scott Ian said in the L.A. Times that it's like being "a bandleader named Freddie Hitler during WW2. "Before the tragedy of 9/11," he adds, "the only scary thing about our band was our bad hair." They will NOT change their name to "Basket Full of Puppies."
   Even the Iranians can have riots for more than anti-American demonstrations. Tens of thousands of youngsters went wild over their soccer team's 2-1 victory over Iraq. In Teheran, a girl who lost her headscarf and was assaulted by a mob of policemen said, "I hope that America drops bombs on your head . . .
   " And, of course, a CBS sitcom, according to Calendar, is considering a pilot for a series "to heighten the stakes," about a middle-aged couple "who are brought together after losing spouses in the World trade center bombing."
   Don't miss it if you can.
   Then, Bush the sequel affirmed in a speech at the Labor Department that, "There is no doubt in my mind, not one doubt in my mind, that we will fail." No one reacted, and he went on to say, "Failure is not part of our vocabulary."
   Rush Limbaugh has lost the hearing in his LEFT EAR, but only 80 percent in his right. (I wish him well, but he can't hear me.)
   And finally, many Brits, when asked to portray their religious affiliation in a recent census, listed "Jedi Knight."

[Go to next column to continue reading]

   "There was a very good view when they bombed the airport."
- Afghani Tajik, L.A. Times

GOD IS PISSED

   Excerpts from the Onion (laugh until you cry): Responding to recent events on Earth, God, the omniscient creator-deity worshipped by billions of followers of various faiths for more than 6,000 years, angrily clarified His longtime stance against humans killing each other Monday.
   "Look, I don't know, maybe I haven't made myself completely clear, so for the record, here it is again," said the Lord, His divine face betraying visible emotion during a press conference near the site of the fallen Twin Towers.
   "Somehow, people keep coming up with the idea that I want them to kill their neighbor. Well, I don't. And to be honest, I'm really getting sick and tired of it. Get it straight. Not only do I not want anybody to kill anyone, but I specifically commanded you not to, in really simple terms that anybody ought to be able to understand.
   "I don't care how holy somebody claims to be," God said. "If a person tells you it's My will that they kill someone, they're wrong. Got it? I don't care what religion you are, or who you think your enemy is, here it is one more time: No killing, in My name or anyone else's, ever again."God continued, "It's not God's will, all right? News flash: 'God's will' equals 'don't murder people.' "
   Worse yet, many of the worst violators claim that their actions are justified by passages in the Bible, Torah and Qur'an. "To be honest, there's some contradictory stuff in there, okay?" God said. "So I can see how it could be pretty misleading. I admit it. My bad. Frankly, much of the material that got in there is dogmatic, doctrinal bullshit. I turn My head for a second and,suddenly, all this stuff about homosexuality gets into Leviticus, and everybody thinks it's God's will to kill gays.
   "Read the book: 'Allah is kind Allah is beautiful, Allah is merciful.' It goes on and on that way, page after page. But, no, some assholes have to come along and revive this stupid holy-war crap just to further their own hateful agenda. So now, everybody thinks Muslims are all murderous barbarians. Thanks, Taliban: 1,000 years of pan-Islamic cultural progress down the drain.
   "The Muslims massacre the Hindus, the Hindus massacre the Muslims. The Buddhists, everybody massacres the Buddhists. The Jews, don't even get me started on the hard-line, right-wing, Meir Kahane-loving Israeli nationalists, man. And the Christians? You people believe in a Messiah who says, 'Turn the other cheek,' but you've been killing everybody you can get your hands on since the Crusades . . . I'm talking to all of you, here!" continued God, His voice rising to a shout. "Do you hear Me?
   "I don't want you to kill anybody. I'm against it, across the board. How many times do I have to say it? Don't kill each other anymore - ever!" Then, witnesses reported, God's shoulders began to shake, and He wept.

   "Stephen King was inspired to become a writer by the Dr. Doolittle books."
- BOMC Newsletter

BEHIND THE EARS

   Bert (not Bart) Simpson wrote in a recent Radio Drama Digest newsletter, "I've produced dinosaur footsteps in the past by scattering a thin layer of gravel and sand onto a drum, thumping it with a pair of old boots and slowing down the result. Sounded OK."
   To which a subscriber responded, "I think I read someplace that the folks who made Jurassic Park used potato chips."
   Bert answered, "Ah, but my version was made for the BBC. Gravel is free, potato chips cost money."
   And by the way, (with an emphasis on the "buy"), "Don't Crush That Dwarf" is being released in the U.K.right now by Acadia, the British reissue division of Evangeline.
   Contact: http://www.evangeline.co.uk/forthcoming.html
   AND! The upcoming Firesign Theatre PBS special "Weirdly Cool" has been picked up by 19 of the top 20 public broadcast stations! (If you live in Detroit, call them and get it on!)

   "The booze bone's connected to the butt bone."
- Bruce Peterson on drinking and smoking.

CAN PIGS FLY?

   An Israeli friend recently informed me that the UK fought the Islamic terrorist attacks by burying the criminals with a pig. Apparently their belief is that if ones' body is buried with a pig (because they are considered unclean) their soul will go to hell.
   I did a little research into this subject matter and found it to be true, and this got me thinking. If we put a baby pig on every airline flight then all suicide terrorists would abort their missions as they would not want their souls to go to hell.
   Turn the pigs loose. The war would be over in a weekend.
(Source LOST!!!)

   "Afghan warriors . . . often place their weapons before them when they pray."
- L.A. Times photo caption

NOT TO HELL

   Dagmar, nee Virginia Ruth Egnor, who helped create the modern image of the "blonde bombshell" from the '40s on, died at 79. She appeared with the likes of Milton Berle, Olsen and Johnson, Bert Lahr and then, Jerry Lester on the precursor to the Tonight Show called "Broadway Open House" where she was presented as a band singer who couldn't sing but spoke "treatises" like, "A mushroom is a place where you make love. Singular means you're musically inclined, and isolate? That means you admit you're tardy."
   And on to the angels goes Doug Millings, 88, who designed over 500 outfits for the Beatles. "I'd been experimenting with round collars," she says in the L.A. Times obit, "[but] I've never claimed to have entirely 'invented" it. She admits, however, that she could never really measure the Fab Four, "because they were never able to stand still."

   "I'm here to give you permission to laugh; and if you don't, I'll have you arrested."
- Mayor Guliani at Seinfeld's Carnegie Hall Fundraiser

10/13/01

* FIRESIGN SITE: http://www.firesigntheatre.com
* FIREZINE SITE: http://www.firezine.net
* FIRESIGN PRODUCT: http://www.lodestone-media.com
* FUNNY TIMES: http://www.funnytimes.com