From Sarasota, Florida......
Hmmm....nice of Bill to lend me his swoosh/gong machine for the weekend. Now let's see I can get this guy in gear..............
(PULL!) tuktuktuktuktuk...tuk....tuk..........bleah.
Damn.
(PULL!)tuktuktuktuktuk...tuk....tuk..........bleah.
Shit! Oh, wait...have to push in choke ¼ of the way before starting)
(PULL!)tuktuktuktuktuktuktuktuk.....tuktuktuk......tuk.....bleah.
Oh, balls. (Wait.....I had to push in the choke once the motor catches. Next one should do it!)
(PULL!) tuktuktuktuktuktuk (Push in that choke!) tuktuktuktuk...rrrrrRRRRRRRRR!
Yippee!!!!
Cheers and Jeers WEEKEND Edition starts your way in the Extended Entry Sec(SWOOOSH!)...tion.......RIGHT NOW!........er, RIGHTN(GONG!)
(Damn it all, Bill makes it look so easy. That three second delay is a killer.)
DISCLAIMER: AAbshier's Cheers and Jeers are not affiliated in any way, shape, or form, with Bill in Portland Maine's Cheers and Jeers. The use of the words JEERS and CHEERS , the swoosh/gong device, and flicked peas are all used with permission of Bill in Portland Maine. Any further resemblances to BiPM`s Cheers and Jeers is deliberately coincidental. So there.
DOC'S BAD JOKE OF THE WEEK:
(In the yellow box so you can avoid it and not miss anything else)
A young zookeeper was starting his first day on the job. He was assigned to feed the polar bears. The senior keeper told him that the oldest polar bear often was slow to start eating, and that sometimes it took hurling fish at him to eat.
So the young keeper went out to feed the polar bears. It took him an hour.
He came back, complaining, "I thought I`d NEVER get that old guy to eat. You know I had to actually throw a fish at his head to piss him off enough to where he would eat! Isn`t there an easier way?"
The old keeper put his arm around the young keeper and said, sagely, "no, you must do it that way each time.
"We all have our bear that we must cross."
JEERS to bad toupees--and the shrill egotistical pseudo-Christian who wears them. Does anyone believe this is Randall Terry's real hair? I suspect his original hairs found him to be such an asshole they all fell out sometime around 2002 after his Operation Rescue days. Or else the wife he left pulled them all out. Your choice!
CHEERS to the first peace scare in the Middle East. On March 26, 1979, Prime Minister Menachim Begin of Israel and President Anwar Sadat of Egypt signed a formal (and hard-won) peace treaty, ending 30 years of conflict between the two nations. Though relations have been strained at times between the two nations, the treaty has held fast for 26 years.
CHEERS to the other fire lighted towards Texan independence. On March 27, 1836, the 400-strong Texan garrison at the town of Goliad, Texas, was summarily executed by forces under the command of Mexican dictator General Antonio Lopez de Santa Ana, following the Mexican's victory there. Rather than break the back of the Texas revolution, the surviving forces were then unified and motivated, which helped them defeat Santa Ana's forces and obtain a surrender less than one month later, in San Jacinto. Pay your respects to Col. James Fannin and the defenders of Goliad here.
JEERS to the Howard Beale News Hour come true. Fox News' Fox and Friends show interviewed John Edward, the psychic and borderline charlatan, treating it as a legitimate news interview about Terri Schiavo. (See Media Matters for the details.)
JEERS to last-second jumpers gone awry. The Oklahoma State men's team fell to the Arizona Wildcats after the `Cats scored on a jumper with 2.5 seconds to go. Hearts were broken across Stillwater when the buzzer-beater launched by John Lucas went awry. Great game, though. Speaking of college basketball.....
CHEERS to the greatest college basketball coach in history. Not so fast, John Wooden; Pat Summitt, the head coach of the University of Tennessee Lady Vols for the past 30 years, passed previous record holder Dean Smith on March 24th, with a win over Purdue. Her teams have now won 880 games--and her current team is still very much in the NCAA tournament hunt.
While we're at it, her 14 Final Four appearances are also an NCAA record.
JEERS to more family matters gone public--with the networks who love it. Jennifer Anniston has filed for divorce from Brad Pitt. It managed to knock everything but Terri Schiavo off the front page on national news. Can I be less interested, please?
CHEERS to the Butthole Surfers! They were a popular band back when I was at Oklahoma State, and it's good to see them still going. They didn't make the news this week, but I've always liked them, and I often remember them when I'm working on an enteritis case for some reason.
JEERS to doctors that should have borders. Dr. "Patch" Adams, semi-immortalized in the syrupy-sweet Robin Williams movie of the same name, is now in Sri Lanka attempting to cheer up tsunami survivors through laughter. A dead fish--that's right, show those kids who have been around death and destruction a dead fish--is part of his act. Can we send him to Crawford instead?
CHEERS to the road less traveled by--and the man who showed us the way. Poet Robert Frost was born this day in 1874. Near the end of his long life, he predicted that John F. Kennedy would win the 1960 Presidential election. He would later be invited to recite a poem at the Inaugural.
CHEERS to Bill in Portland, Maine. Because doing a weekly C&J column is harder than it looks!
The week's winner is: Jeb! Governor of Florida!
(Golf clap?......)
Where to begin? Jeb! pushed the successful passage of "Terri's Law" in 2003, which forced replacement of the feeding tube after Judge Greer ruled in favor of its withdrawal. That law was later ruled unconstitutional by the Florida Supreme Court, which helped set up the current fiasco still in progress. Even then he pushed the Florida Senate so hard to pass a new "Terri's Law" last week that many Senators refused to take calls from him. The bill failed in the Senate.
Then after all that, and attempting to send the DCF and state officers to defy court decisions to keep the feeding tube out, he then wimpily complains on TV that he had done everything in his power to keep Ms. Schiavo alive. Nothing like showing your true colors there, Guv.
So what are y'all cheering and jeering about this weekend?