Planet Proctor 2003 Volume 11

 "We had to be prepared for catastrophic success." ~ Gen. Richard Meyers

 WEAPONS OF MASS DECEPTION

           Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Said Sahaf held a news conference in the cockroach-infested Palestine Hotel a few days ago, and accompanied by the muffled thuds of distant and persistent bombardments portrayed American forces as "not even [within] 100 miles. They are not near Baghdad!  Don't believe them!"

        "They are trapped, " he continued to the room of bemused journalists, "in Umm Qasr. They are trapped near Basra.  They are trapped near Nasiriyah.  They are trapped near Najaf.  They are trapped everywhere."

        In the stunned silence that followed Sarif's exhortations, an understated British correspondent inquired, "Are they also trapped near the airport, sir?"

        But an L.A. Times letter writer notes that nonetheless, the Iraqis have managed to keep their TV station going. "A TV network that stays on the air after all those bombs..." suggests R. J. Johnson, "It's called UPN, right?"

        Yet day by day it appears more and more inevitable that the infected corruption that is the Saddam regime will soon be supplanted by our own "Pox Americana."


          "Always the path of American destiny has been into the unknown." ~ Carl Sandburg


STILL FAKING IT

        Last orbit contained some shameful but un-credited punning in "A Faquir Fake Book." I have since learned that the culprits are actually writer Dean Christopher & jazz guitarist Barry Zweig and here's some updates...

        "U.N., the Nut and the Muslims; Armor, Armor, Armor; Life Is Just Hezbollah Cherries; I Am Yemen, Hear Me Roar; We Kiss in a Chador; (I Want a) Sunni Kind of Love,;Bedouin the Devil and the Deep Blue Sikh."

                (Take a deep breath, then continue...)

        "While My Qatar Gently Weeps, We've Got A Tikrit to Ryad, Kirkuk K-Katy; Hold That Tigris, and Ba'ath Home Again in Indiana." And from Detroit ad man Garry Nielsen, "Bye Bye Blackhawk, I Shot the Sharif and Come Bahrain Or Come Shine."

        "As they say," quips Dean, "once you get past the shame, the rest is easy!


 "If you can't be a good example, then you'll just have to be a horrible warning." - Catherine Aird


AND THE HITS KEEP COMING

  Oh-oh, there's more! Talk about Shock and Awe! This list comes from the shameless Danny Mann:

        "Iraq Around The Clock, Papa's Got A Brand New Baghdad, Mesopotamian Homesick Blues, Just Kuwait Henry Higgins, Wake Up Little Suez, In The Oily Mornin' Reign, Shi'ite Loves You, Yeah Yeah Yeah; Saddy Don't You Walk So Fast, I Love A Brigade, Ain't No Amman Like the One I Got, Iran All The Way Home, Allah Be There, and Scud This Be Magic."


           "French's Mustard - The Only Thing French is the Name." ~ Wartime Motto


WHAT'S NEXT? MIRRORS?

        A new ban on smoking just signed into law in New York state will affect 14,000 bars, restaurants and other public places in the Big Smoky Apple but:

        "It's got to take more people to enforce this ban than we have already assigned to homeland security across the country," noted environmentalist lawyer Jan Walker in the LA Times.

        But inventive chef Sandro Fioriti is already flavoring dishes at his restaurant with fresh tobacco leaves, including gnocchi, filet mignon and panna cotta.

        Next up -- Lobster and Shrimp Salad a la Nicotine and to finish you off, Marlboro grappa  and Menthol Chocolate Souffle.

        What, no smoked turkey breast?


    "At a trendy Hollywood steakhouse, you can order the director's cut." ~ Phil's Phunny Phacts


THINK BROWN

    The top 10 "Rejected Dept of Homeland Security Slogans" from Chris White's www.topfive.com, to replace the uninspiring, "Don't Be Afraid, Be Ready..."

       10 - Now With 20 Percent Fewer Constitutional Freedoms!

        9 - Fear not a Terrorist Iraqi - Move to Canada and Learn to Play Hockey!

        8 - Pay No Attention to the Economy Behind the Curtain!

        7 - Orange You Glad We Didn't Say "Red"?

        6 - Whoa, That Bill Clinton Sure Was a Randy Son of a Gun!

        5 - Dude, Where's Your Duct Tape?

        4 - Be Prepared. Wear Brown Pants.

        3 - Now With Color-Coded Garanimals' Threat Charts

        2 - Shhhh!!! We're Hunting Wabbits...and...

        1 - Holy Shit!!  What Was THAT!!!???


  "Our friends are so cute; they're the only ones we know without call waiting." ~ Melinda Peterson


E - NOUGH ALREADY!

        Producer Larry Belling announces that he is closing several email accounts...

        "In order to stop the steady stream of missives about Viagra, online web women, sex aids, home money making, anti-aging, mortgage refinance, anti-American propaganda from French domains, anti-French propaganda from American domains, 419 investment scams from Africa, penile enlargement, low interest loans, hair restoring, debt consolidation, toner cartridges for printers I don't own, lousy sexist jokes, DVD copy protection-breakers, free cellphones, ways to eat pizza and lose weight, sucking teenagers, cheapest phone calls, Asian lesbians, muscle and bone density builders, wrinkle removers, fake diplomas, tax problem solvers, bulk e-mail offers, naked girls next door, snoring cures, hormone replacement therapy, and faculty positions (including missionary), that are affecting my own productivity, sensitivity and sanity."

       I think he speaks for us all, so - Send this Message to Everyone You Know!!!!


   "Life is like a roll of toilet paper; the closer it gets to the end, the faster it goes." ~ From John Scialli


ANOTHER TERRORIST PLOT?

        From animated Planeteers Marsha Goodman & Dan Einstein, an interesting excerpt from an article in the LA Times about an Al Qaeda suspect turned in by authorities in Nairobi who may have participated in the 1998 bombings of American embassies.

        The suspect was identified as Suleiman Abdalla Salim Hemed, who reportedly used the aliases "Ngaka" and "Chuck Norris" and implied "possible future terrorist plans." Like what?  A sequel to "Walker, Texas Ranger"?

        I also love the fact that a peace sign was removed from the print ads for the film "What a Girl Wants." So what the Hell does a girl want, then? To be overwhelmed by superior stealth forces in a nighttime vertical insertion?


    "The time has come to take the bull by the tail and face the situation." ~ W.C. Fields


A BULLET IN FROM THE POINT-A-GUN

        The Soldier of the Future will be equipped with voice monitors to measure stress levels, sensors to measure life signs and an "Objective Individual Combat Weapon" that fires kinetic energy projectiles and fragment munitions up to 1,094 yards.  Hope there are no civilians in those yards.

        Meanwhile, one khaki wag called his stint in the desert "Operation Eternal Boredom" while another said, "You learn about the Euphrates in geography class, and you get here and you think, this is the Euphrates? Looks like a muddy creek to me."

        Marine Reconnaissance Staff Sergeant Larry Simmons continued, "These people got nothing. Even in a little town like ours of twenty five hundred people you got a McDonald's at one end and a Hardee's at the other."

        But the most feel-good story going around is about a Lieutenant ordering his platoon to go on one knee, hold weapons downward and "smile", thus defusing a group of outraged Iraqis fearing that the troops were going to desecrate the Ali Mosque.

        Meanwhile, in France, one guy changed his name from "Bush" to "Buisson" - French for "little shrub", while a group of malicious idiots defaced a WWII war memorial to our fallen defenders.

        Oh, well, as events continue to unfold, just remember the ancient Chinese curse: "May you live in interesting times."


            "The French - they're always there when they need us!" ~ Mark Summerfield


TIME TO BUY STOCKS?

        A "time-traveler" from the year 2256 created a portfolio worth over $350 million through 126 high-risk trades in just two week from a mere $800, in trades apparently taking advantage of unexpected business developments "which simply couldn't be pure luck," according to SEC investigators.

        In "a mind-boggling four-hour confession," writes Chad Kultgen in Weekly World News, Andrew Carlssin, 44, declared that he had traveled here from over 200 years in the future where it's common knowledge that our era went through great stock losses and only a few holdings recovered strongly.


        "It was just too tempting to resist," he exclaimed. "I had planned to make it look natural, you know, lose a little here and there so it doesn't look too perfect; but I just got caught in the moment."

         In a bid for leniency, he's offered to cough up "historical facts" like  the hideout of  Bin Laden and an AIDS cure in exchange for a trip "back" to 2066 in his "time craft", the location and technology of which he will not divulge lest it "fall into the wrong hands."

             Although confident the time-tripper's claims are bogus and imply an insider trading scam, SEC sources admit, "No one can find any record of any Andrew Carlssin existing anywhere before December 2002. But, they add, "He's going to sit in a jail cell on Rikers Island until he [gives] up his sources."


        "Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known." ~ Carl Sagan


A MESSAGE FROM OLD EUROPE

        "Lieber freund, ich bin Mrs. Sese-seko witwe des spaeten Praesidenten Mobutu Sese-Seko von Zaire, jetzt bekannt als Demokratische Republik vom Kongo, etc., etc..."

How do you say "scam" in German?


"She's as full of shit as a cat in a butcher shop." ~ Actor Bill Frawley


IN THE OUT BASKET

        Last week we said farewell to Eddie Jaffe, 80, one of the last of the great old press agents from the heyday of columnists like Winchell, Lyons and Hopper.

        Among his clients: Jimmy Hoffa, Think-a-Drink Hoffman, a mental mixologist who read imbibers' minds; Rosita the Dove Dancer, for whom he got ink by declaring "her birds had collapsed with a nervous breakdown"; Zorita the Snake Charmer whom he claimed fell in love with one of her serpents; and Zimmy, a legless man who swam from Albany to Manhattan while eating bananas.  "He floated just like a cork," Jaffe recalled.

        Dubbed "The Press Agent of Hopeless Causes," he failed to help piano player Borge Rosenbaum, who later made it big after changing his name - to Victor Borge.

        We also lost imbedded NBC (not "Nuclear-Biological-Chemical") tele-journalist David Bloom to an embedded blood clot; but he left us with these words: "Obviously, I wouldn't ask you to tell me what they tell you about what they think is up next."

        And lights out for designer Rae Creevey, after a long battle with health issues following a stroke suffered in 1991.

        Rae was one of the founders of the East West Players although non-Asian himself, and was nominated for an Emmy for 11 years as head lighting designer on "General Hospital" just celebrating 40 years at ABC. Recently Rae was also honored with an L.A. Weekly Career Achievement Award.


        Rae's friends celebrate the 69 years he brought light to our world and our condolences to his widow and our fellow Antaean, Janelllen Steininger.


"Start every day off with a smile and get it over with." ~ W.C. Fields


IT'S CURTAINS!!!

        The Antaeus Classical Ensemble will be presenting MayFest - 26 days and nights of workshops, readings and performances during the month of May; and Melinda and I will be recreating roles in Thorton Wilder's "Long Christmas Dinner"and our celebrated L.A. update of Gilbert & Sullivan's "Trial By Jury" as part of the annual NoHo Festival during that time, as well.

Visit http://www.antaeus.org for details and reservations.


PLANET PROCTOR
© 2003 by Phil Proctor
Published APRIL 6, 2003