Planet Proctor 2005 Volume 12

 S.O.S.

"It is with a sad heart and a diminished bank account that I must inform you that on the afternoon of the day before I was to begin my fourth season as announcer on Big Brother 6, I was told that due to all the 'new' aspects of the show my services would not be required after all, even though I actually had a tour of the house and got my new security badge!

As reported July 15th on ShowBizdata.com in an article entitled, "Now It's the Announcer Who's Booted from the Big Brother House"…

"Phil Proctor, a member of the Firesign Theater satirical group of the 1960s and '70s and the announcer on the U.S. version of Big Brother in recent years, has been removed from the show. Writing in Kansas City Star TV writer Aaron Barnhart's blog Thursday, Proctor said 'According to a nice letter from the producers at Arnold Shapiro Productions the suits at CBS decided to change the entire opening sequence including the music (after 5 years) and the announcer (after 3) and they waited until the last minute to can me... so there you are.'  The changes have apparently not achieved their intended result.      Ratings for the show have been lower this season than they were a year ago, although the show continues to win its time slot. Thursday night's Big Brother 6 scored a 5.4 rating and a 9 share, down from a 6.0/11 from the comparable week a year ago.

        I suppose this is actually very fitting as the theme this year is "The Summer of Secrets." Boy, was I surprised!

    "George Orwell got it just right when, in the winter of 1940, he bitterly observed 'highly civilized human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me.'" ~ Michael Ledeen, Jewish World Review

WRITER'S BLOCK

     By Norman Corwin

I lacked élan/Through all of Jan

I was caught in a web/In Feb

I was well below par/In the weeks of Mar

A cloud of vapor/Invested Apr

I lost my way/Six times in May'

I loafed through the boon/Of a rare day in June

My well ran dry/In the heat of July

I sloshed in a bog/In the month of Aug

I damn near wept/Because of Sept        

But I got unlocked/In the middle of Oct

However, I was back in the usual mess/In Dec

     "We resent the term 'copy' because of the implicit plagiarism connotation.  In point of fact, we only stole about 50 percent of the material contained herein." ~ Johnson Sheen Advertising, Portland, OR

THINK AGAIN

An American tourist is visiting Belfast in Northern Ireland and decides to go for a stroll around the town, but when he wanders into a certain district, suddenly a masked man steps out of an alley and pokes a gun in his back.  "What are you, Catholic or Protestant?" asks the armed man."Oh, great," thinks the Yank, "If I say I'm Catholic, this guy is sure to be Protestant.  If I say I'm Protestant, he's sure to be Catholic. Either way I'm dead." But then he gets a bright idea that will surely save his life. "Actually," he says, "I'm Jewish."  And the guy behind him replies,           "Gee, I must be the luckiest Arab in Ireland."

       "Anybody can become angry, that is easy; but to be angry with the right person, and to the right degree, and at the right time, and for the right purpose, and in the right way, that is not within everybody's power, that is not easy." ~ Aristotle

IT'S LIKE, WHATEVER

        (Here's a story I stitched together from the latest batch of actual analogies, similes, and metaphors found in high school essays forwarded to me by several readers…)

        She walked into my office like a centipede with 98 missing legs. Her eyes were like limpid pools, only they had forgotten to put in any pH cleanser. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master. Her hair glistened [from] the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.

        She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.

        She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli and he was room-temperature Canadian beef. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free. He was deeply in love. He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant and she was the East River.

      "Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creative." ~ Jazz great Charles Mingus

GAY DAZE

        Gene Stone in the Huffington Post writes, "Steven P. Martin, Ph.D., a professor of sociology at The University of Maryland-College Park, has just completed an exhaustive study of marriage and divorce; it shows that divorce is directly correlated to a lack of education.

        "From 1970 to the 1990s, divorce rates declined by approximately one-half among recipients of a bachelor's degree. By contrast, divorce rates were high and remained essentially constant among women without a bachelor's degree. It's not about homosexuality. It's about education.  

        "By the way, the one state in the US where same-sex marriage is legal -- Massachusetts -- has the lowest divorce rate in the country."

   "If you get to thinkin' you're a person of some influence, try ordering somebody else's dog around." ~ Anon

                   Bush addresses the Cross Dressers of America convention. (Michael Dare)

FEAR THE SKY

        When NASA sent the Deep Probe spacecraft smashing into the Tempel 1 comet to learn more about the origins of our solar system, they didn't forsee that it would also result in a shallow lawsuit from a Russian astrologer.

        Marina Bai has sued the agency for $300 million (about what the mission cost)  to offset her "moral sufferings," claiming that the probe could "deform her horoscope… [and ruin] the natural balance of forces in the universe."  

        Scientists say the crash did not significantly alter the comet's orbit around the sun and said the experiment does not pose any danger to Earth.        

        Wanna bet the Moscow court will say, "Bai Bai" to her out-of-this-world claims?

     "The ancient Romans erected stone barriers on their main streets to cut down on nighttime chariot racing." ~Phil's Phunny Phacts  

PUT A CORK IN IT

        She married and had 13 children. Her husband died. She married again and had 7 more children. Again her husband died. But she remarried, and this time had 5 more children. Alas, she finally died…

        Standing before her coffin the preacher thanked God for this very loving woman and said, "Lord, they're finally together."

        One mourner leaned over and quietly asked her friend, "Do you think he means her first, second or third husband?'

        The friend replied, "I think he means her legs."  

                       "My wife is my partner-in-time." ~ Phil's Phunny Phacts

LEOS RULE!!!

        Since I'm a Leo and turning an unimaginable age on July 28th, I thought this item by Ethiopian columnist Anthony Mitchell oddly appropriate.

        It seems that three lions rescued a 12-year-old girl who had been kidnapped and held captive for a week by men who wanted to force her into marriage by chasing off her abductors and protecting her for half a day until police and relatives tracked her down, according to police sergeant Wondimu Wedajo.

        "They stood guard until we found her and then they just left her like a gift and went back into the forest," the Sgt. added in Addisabba.

        "Everyone thinks this is some kind of miracle, because normally the lions would attack people," Noted Stuart Williams, a rural development wildlife expert, but he suggests that "a young girl whimpering could be mistaken for the mewing sound from a lion cub, which in turn could explain why they [the lions] didn't eat her."             

                Or it could be a miracle.

        "If you don't have any money, but you're really attractive, just give me a hug and we'll call it even." ~ Homeless man in New York City

DOCTOR PROCTOR SEZ

        The best way to live a long and healthy life is to exercise, eat plenty of fruits and vegetables, spend time in the fresh air, eliminate stress and get plenty of rest.

        So for a long, healthy carefree life, I recommend that you walk to the liquor store (exercise), put lime in your Corona (fruit), celery in your Bloody Mary (veggies), drink outdoors on the patio (fresh air), tell jokes (eliminate stress) and then pass out. (rest).  I rest my case.

                        "My Prius gives me Great Gas Smileage…" ~ Phil's Phunny Phacts

23rd QUALM

Bush is my shepherd; I dwell in want.

He maketh logs to be cut down in national forests.

He leadeth trucks into the still wilderness.

He restoreth my fears.

He leadeth me in the paths of international disgrace for his ego's sake.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of pollution and war, I will find no exit, for thou art in office.

Thy tax cuts for the rich and thy media control, they discomfort me.

Thou preparest an agenda of deception in the presence of thy religion.

Thou anointest my head with foreign oil.

My health insurance runneth out.

Surely megalomania and false patriotism shall follow me all the days of thy term,

And my jobless child shall dwell in my basement forever. - Anon

"I sincerely hope the US never gets hit by terrorists again. But if they do, please hit the MTV studios." ~ Anonymous viewer ont  the "Live 8" concert

CLICK HERE

HORNY:http://media.ebaumsworld.com/hornguy.wmv>http://media.ebaumsworld.com/hornguy.wmv

SCREEN CLEANER: http://www.legrady.hu/sc.html

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YOU RULE!

        The Planet salutes John Scialli, Sarah Montague, Glen Banks, Bill Coombs, Michael Clark Haney, Lev Spiro, George Cratcha Wiliam Johnson, Gary Margolis, and especially Andy Thomas for his constant good humor, patience and invaluable technical assistance.

PLANET PROCTOR
© 2005 by Phil Proctor
Published July 23, 2005