And you thought it couldn't be worse?

So did I. But, my friend, we were wrong. It can always be worse

Singer admits affair with Roger Clemens

Country singer Mindy McCready confirms that she had a long-term affair with pitcher Roger Clemens, the New York Daily News reported on its Web site yesterday.

“I cannot refute anything in the story,” McCready told the newspaper.

The paper reported Monday that the two met in a Florida karaoke bar when McCready was 15 and Clemens was 28, pitching for Boston and a married father of two. The newspaper said it wasn't until later, after McCready had moved to Nashville and become a country singing star, that the relationship turned intimate.

Wow, guy. I hope you have a strong marriage to Mrs. C. Because, if the conditions were right, I could sure see her, after a few days of deliberation, going to the commissioner and/or whoever has the steroids brief for a little chat (assuming, of course, there's something to chat about). But if this is all in the past and you have a good marriage, you two can deal with it - may have already dealt with it for all we the public know!

It's just another reminder that once you become a celebrity these days, you cannot assume that anything will remain private. Behave accordingly.

Sorry for my absence . . .

I've been quite depressed lately (in the "clinical" sense), also we went to Dallas (yay!!!) for 10 days at Christmastime, which was wonderful. But I will try to post a lot more - I really enjoy communicating with all of you who are kind enough to read this blog. (Best thing to do? Put it on an RSS reader! :^) If you're on a Mac, I highly recommend Vienna. I've been using it for two months and it has changed my life. Well, okay, it has made keeping up with my favorite blogs easier, and better-looking! And it's free!)

So . . . you wanna know why conservatives don't quite trust John McCain?

Well . . . Iowahawk, once again, comes through with a hilarious satire that spoofs "the maverick's" relationship to "The Man". McCain won Florida yesterday, and he may yet win the nomination - but without compromises of a different kind, the base is going to work for him more like they did for Dole than for G. W. Bush. And then hel-loooooo Obama.

The Law of Unintended Consequences . . .

. . . asserts itself once again!

Breaking up not hard to do for China's "me" generation

Shut uuuuup!!!

Getting ready for Thanksgiving (we have it on Friday evening here, since my husband doesn't have Thursday off), had to pass this along:

'Shut up' is hit ringtone in Spain

MADRID, Spain - Many Spaniards were so amused when their king told Venezuela's president to "shut up" they want to hear the words every time their phone rings.

About half a million people have downloaded a mobile phone ringtone featuring the phrase "Por que no te callas?" or "Why don't you shut up?" leading Madrid daily El Pais reported on its Web site Monday.

That's what King Juan Carlos told Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez during a heated confrontation at a summit in Chile last week.

The ringtone is thought to have generated around $2.2 million for the companies selling it, El Pais said.

Su Majestad rocks. That is all.

Lileks on The Great American Smokeout!

It’s also the Great American Smokeout. The message is good, the intention is laudable. I’m not sure it has any effect on smokers whatsoever, except to give a note of grim defiance and hollow solidarity to the mood around the outdoor ashtray. When I smoked cigarettes the day made me feel guilty, for a few minutes. I’d read Ann Landers with the morning coffee, learn that it was Smokeout day, read her comments – smokers were administered a lashing with a wet noodle from Dominatrix Ann - and I’d think: I should quit. They just raised the price to 65 cents a pack anyway. If I put that money aside I could go to Europe. Where everyone smokes. It’s not bad for you over there because they also drink olive oil, or something. Well, I’ll cut down today. Then I’d read an article about how the nuclear arms treaty negotiation had broken down, realize I probably wouldn’t see 30 anyway.

If someone saw me smoking and pointed out that it was the Great American Smokeout Day, I’d snap “tell it to Brezhnev,” and leave it at that. Some things are just beyond your control, you know. Later I learned: do not base your bad habits on the assumption of inevitable nuclear catastrophe, because things may not work out the way you want.

. . . Anyway, if you decide to quit today, try the nicotine gum. It tastes like ordinary gum that’s been left in an ashtray overnight. You’ll feel better in the end, and –

Good Lord, I’ve become Ann Landers. CURSE YOU, twenty years of homogenizing effects produced by tenure in the mainstream media! Curse you!

BTW, we hear that ALL smoking is bad. Hmmm. I smoke between 1 and 1 1/2 packs a month (seriously - I only smoke good cigarettes and they're almost C$13.00 with tax up here!) - any word from the Lung Association on my percentages?

(p.s. Check out the rest of Lileks' column and the comments - some funny fridge-cleaning stories!)

The Curt Jester,

always humorous, put up a post the other day on "Books I Would Like to See." And Jeff would know, he was a serious atheist for years.

The Trouble with Leopard

Been reading any Mac lists/sites/etc. in the last week or so? Then you'll know juuuuuuust what this cartoon is saying.

One of the most entertaining Internet blowups you'll ever see

Seriuhsly. Go here now for the story. (H/t Kathy S.)

Baghdadi terrorists - N.B.: Go to the Green Zone entrances manned by Peruvian troops.

You're welcome.

Okay, Alberta, you asked for it:

Alberta to boost royalties by $1.4-billion

I thought Ed Stelmach wasn't going to implement the Review to the last letter, and he didn't. So now he can say to the oil companies, hey, I'm trying to help you guys here!, and then he can say to the voters, hey, I got more money out of the oil companies for you! Mr. Stelmach prays a lot with the pastor of our parish, and last night at a prayer meeting my husband was at, Father asked everyone to pray for the premier and for the province, and said he felt that it was a rather "Solomonic" choice in front of the premier. When my husband came home and told me that, he and I just looked at each other, remembering our analyses of the situation in the last week, and then both nodded our heads, without saying anything. So I am thoroughly unsurprised at the result.

Don't they say never look a gift horse in the mouth? Well, Albertans have been poking and prodding those horse teeth for a couple of years now, and I guess feel that it's time to bring in the government as veterinary dentist (if I can extend this that far). Hey, I just want property prices to go down - remember, that's my fair share!

The Post (which is quite a pro-business paper) had a nice little line at the veeerrry end of the article I linked to above, perfect understatement: The government expects some slowdown in activity from the new measures. Um, quite.

Alberta oil royalties info coming this afternoon

Before we hear about it, let me just say one thing to my fellow Albertans:

YOU PEOPLE ARE IDIOTS!

There, that felt better.

I could go on about how many billions per year are already knocking around Edmonton unspent and the government's going to do this for another (maybe) lousy $2b, or that whole killing-the-golden-goose thing, but I won't. And you know why?

Because if Alberta is now a place where it's I-want-what's-coming-to-me, well, my husband is tenured at a nice pay grade. So what do I care? Ha! Plus (and this is what I'm really hoping for), if the economy craters, we'll be able to afford a nice house here instead of a shack.

So bring on the royalty hike! Because I want a cheaper real estate market - that's my fair share.

"It's like Laura Ashley married a Poison video . . ."

All too true.

Dumbledore: Gay

That's right. The National Post's Ampersand blog directs us to this Reuters article where Miss Rowling spills all. He was in love with Gellert Grindelwald, you see. How's that for layers within layers?

Oy.

I have nothing else to say about this except that I do not want to hear about: Dumbledore being a gay role model. Dumbledore being "queer" (either derogatory or laudatory). Dumbledore being a pederast. Any Dumbledore/Harry slash fiction. Or, it's no big deal because he's only a fictional character. Because you know that's not true. Basically, I just don't want to hear about it at all. In fact, I think I will go bury my head in the sand right now. And if that makes me "homophobic", so be it. I don't want to hear about that, either.

That is all.

"Irish drop to 0-5 after defeat by Purdue"

Okay, so this is how it's going to be. One of those years.

Now I'm not so sad we don't have cable - at least this fall.

Are you going to put the "smackdown" on Merriam-Webster for putting "ginormous" in the dictionary?

Well, instead of feeling like you should put an "IED" under their latest edition of the collegiate dictionary, maybe you should just go work a "sudoku" puzzle or watch a "telenovela" instead. Word.

New Dictionary Includes 'Ginormous'

David Warren on the EU

I'm with Mr. Warren on everything he says - especially on Jarosław Kaczyński. Pan Kaczyński does cause "trouble for people I dislike" and "is among the few European politicians willing to mention the two things you never mention in the company of European politicians: the War, and Europe’s Christian heritage." That totally puts him in my good books. If only he could kick the LPN out of his coalition - anti-Semitism is not nice, to say the least.

(H/t Mark Steyn)

Constituting EU

Gee, finally a British Conservative says something I can agree with

From the Telegraph (CHT Jimmy Akin):

Let the children play, or 'they will never learn'

Children are so cocooned by their parents that they rarely venture far from home and have little concept of space, volume and how the world actually works, David Willetts, the shadow education secretary, said yesterday.

The area in which children were allowed to range freely by their parents was a ninth of what it was a generation ago, he said. He also referred to "most worrying" research which showed children could not grasp basic maths.

Not surprising. And, I should think, no different in North America.

Bush's Moment of Zen

If only GWB took his own counsel more often!

A Chinese Cardinal Meets the Real Bush
By Robert D. Novak

On May 31, President Bush met for 35 minutes in the private living quarters of the White House with Cardinal Joseph Zen, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Hong Kong, in an event that was not announced and did not appear on his official schedule. Their meeting did not please the State Department, elements of the Catholic hierarchy and certainly not the Chinese government. But it signifies what George W. Bush is really about.

H/t Catholic World News.

Why do I feel like I've heard this liturgy before???

Fr. Z notes that one of Gerald's readers has obtained a copy of "a Trautman draft of the Mass" (scroll down to the bottom of the post). Somehow it seems familiar . . . (h/t Diogenes at CWN)

Further update: From Fr. Z's comments, one "Le Renard" posts:

Ordo Missae Cum Populo – 2007 Edition

Priest: My peeps, let’s roll with the Lord, givin’ Him props and love

Congregation:
Yo, Bid Daddy upstairs (Our Father, who art in heaven)
You be chillin (Hallowed be thy name)
So be yo hood (Thy Kingdom come)
You be sayin’ it, I be doin’ it (Thy will be done)
In this here hood and yo’s (On earth as it is in heaven)
Gimme some eats (Give us this day our daily bread)
And cut me some slack, (And forgive us our trespasses)
Sos I be doin’ it to dem dat diss me (As we forgive those who trespass against us)
don’t be pushing me into no jive (And lead us not into temptation)
and keep dem Crips away (But deliver us from evil)
‘Cause you always be da Man (For thine is the Kingdom, the power and the glory forever and ever.)
Aaa-men (Amen)

Kennedy Annulment (or, rather, Non-Annulment) Confirmation

Wow. Just, wow.