ST. LOUIS – Future hall of famer and part-time player manager Albert Pujols today explained the bizarre hit-and-run play during Game Five of the World Series in which the runner (slow-footed Allen Craig) ran, but the hitter-manager (Albert Pujols) didn’t even swing).

“The guy was a distraction for me down there on first base,” Pujols told reporters at the team’s daily media briefing today. “I wanted him gone because I couldn’t concentrate on hitting the ball out the stadium with him pestering me out of the corner of my eye.

“If I were a left-handed hitter, man, he’s still be there, or I mean he would have still been there when I hit the game-tying home run, but I’m a right hander. Not going to apologize about that.”

When asked directly if he had called the hit and run with the intent to not swing so Craig would be eliminated from first base, Pujols replied, “Him looming down at first base … it was awful. It was worse than having a splinter in your eye that you can’t get out. Yes … or maybe he’d steal the base, but then I’d have to put it on again to get him out of my sight.”

Craig has stolen five bases in his career.

After receiving the hit-and-run order from Pujols, which, according to Cardinals manager Tony La Russa, was transmitted via “buttocks – Albert touches his buttocks in a particular order to put it on,” Craig dutifully lumbered into action on the base path when the pitcher began his windup, only to watch Pujols impassively watch the pitch sail by.  

Rangers catcher Mike Napoli threw him out by several feet after pausing to tweet “watch this” to his followers.

Pujols was then intentionally walked.

“Dang, they walked me, so I didn’t even get to take a swing after getting rid of Craig,” said Pujols. “I guess that’s why Tony gets the really big bucks – he can think more than one move ahead.”

La Russa refused to criticize Pujols hit-and-take play – sort of. “Albert’s special. He’s a special guy, special ballplayer. He’s in the circle – the inside circle. He’s going to the Hall of Fame. He’s earned it, ok? He’s earned it. I have confidence in him. He’s earned the right to test that confidence by calling a hit and run and then not hitting, so we have a new play now, the take-and-run.”

“I’m just glad I didn’t call it – I thought I might have accidentally called it when I picked my nose before that at bat, but I didn’t. It was all on Albert, who is a great player.”

The results, which were released today, include an executive summary that states in part, “Implicit in the hysterical public outrage over TSA pat-down procedures and so-called ‘nude’ body scans are the assertions A) The typical airline passenger possesses a physique attractive enough to be a target of unsolicited fondling or voyeurism in front of thousands of witnesses, including law enforcement, and B) Notwithstanding the thousands of witnesses and quality of passenger physique, TSA agents have an innate and apparently unique desire to fondle or lecherously peep at the typical airline passenger.

“The GAO’s exhaustive analysis of 23,714 airline passengers and 2,515 TSA agents concludes that both premises are patently false. Neither the supply side nor the demand side of the passenger genitalia dynamic can remotely support this overdone notion of ‘sexual assault,’ which is instead supported only by self-important posturing, wildly inflated perceptions of self esteem, simple paranoia, and, most commonly, a willfully specious substitution of spurious inconvenience claims for legitimate liberty or security concerns.

Really - he doesn't want to "touch your junk."

“In short, [double entendre intended] the ‘junk’ of the average airline passenger is as unpalatable to a TSA agent as it is to the rest of the general public, who, with the exception of unfortunate spouses and other close family members, wisely maintain a safe distance whenever possible from such biomass.”

Although the advanced imaging devices have been in place since 2007, the TSA began deploying them in greater numbers in March of this year. They are currently in place in 68 of the more than 450 airports in which the TSA operates.

Controversy over the enhanced TSA screening procedures came to a head last week [double entendre intended] when the latest social media gadfly arose from his lifetime slumber of unremarkable mediocrity to record his loud reprobation of a TSA agent attempting to complete the loathsome task of patting him down. He then posted it online with the ardent hope it would “go viral.”

Unfortunately but predictably, it did, and millions of viewers heard the agitator, John Tyner, declare, “If you touch my junk, I’ll have you arrested.”

Although his 15 minutes of fame will expire shortly, hordes of like-minded American consumers who share his creative imagination in inventing new rights on a seemingly daily basis have already rallied around the “don’t touch my junk” battle cry, prompting the GAO study.

“The study has a lot of great findings that support what we’ve been trying to say all along,” said an attorney for the TSA. “TSA agents already work in a bio-hazardous environment due to chronic close-in exposure to passengers removing their footwear. Their desire to see or touch the ‘junk’ of today’s mass-transit air traveler is substantially less than the passenger’s desire to undergo the procedure. No one wants this except for the terrorists.”

Originally posted 2010-11-18 17:13:49. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Cranked Tweeds, a passenger on board flight 175, was the first to alert the crew

WASHINGTON – Nine Muslim passengers were kicked off  AirTran Airways flight 175 from Washington, D.C., to Orlando, Fla. after their fellow passengers became alarmed over the group’s lack of a hangover the day after New Year’s Eve revelries.

Cranked Tweeds, a passenger on board the flight, said he and others in his group of 49 became suspicious of both the appearance and the behavior of the nine people as they boarded the aircraft.

“They was all clean pressed, like as if they had done showered the night before,” he slurred. “They was most definitely not hung over, which scared everybody. I mean, you don’t see that on hardly any AirTran flight, least of all on New Year’s Day.”

Tweeds said he rushed to alert cabin crew members, who in turn summoned the captain.

“Him got there right away,” Tweeds said of the captain. “Him handled it real good.”

AirTran Airways spokesman Hatched Snout confirmed that field sobriety tests were administered to most of the suspicious passengers. “When the tests failed to reveal any evidence of alcohol in their systems mere hours after the New Year was rung in, our worst suspicions were confirmed.”

DEA, ATF, FBI and local police forces were summoned to the aircraft and forcibly removed the group, which included an anesthesiologist, a lawyer, and their wives and children, ages two through seven.

Although a 15-hour interrogation ultimately revealed no direct plot against aviation safety, Snout stood by his airline’s actions. “Perhaps not being hung over on New Year’s Eve is not a direct threat to airline safety,” he conceded after being told of law enforcement’s findings, “but it is dangerously un-American and we commend our crew members for their vigilance.”

Originally posted 2009-01-02 13:08:53. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

The bovine surplus has been building amid crashing milk prices, reduced spending by consumers terrified by Great Depression 2.0 and shrinking demand for U.S. cheese, milk and butter abroad. Meanwhile, the cost of feeding cows has skyrocketed thanks to rising corn and alfalfa prices, which continue to be bolstered by the belated ethanol craze.

“In this economy, it just don’t make no sense to keep so many cows alive,” said Culotte Tarter, a foreman at one of the largest dairy factory farms in California. “But unfortunately, there ain’t no way to get milk from a dead cow. Believe me, we done tried.”

However, in a piece of good news for the beleaguered dairy industry, there is at least one thing that can be obtained from dead cattle: meat. That idea, says Label Impasse, R.D., M.Ed., a spokesperson with the National Dairy council, came to the organization “almost like an epiphany.”

Dr. Impasse says the council was reviewing the latest numbers: 1.5 million dairy cows rendered obsolete by the recession are now up for slaughter this year alone. “We just thought to ourselves that there had to be a way to reclaim some of this product. Even just a few basis points applied to 1.5 million units was going to make a difference,” she said.

I scream, you scream, cows scream for ice cream!

That’s when the idea of meat-enhanced ice cream hit them.

“We were staring down the barrel of the wholesale destruction of our infrastructure, at least for 2009,” recalled Impasse. “Suddenly, here was a way for us to reinvest waste product right back into our own value chain without losing market share.”

Impasse was quick to stress that meat-flavored ice cream will continue to fly the flag of the dairy brand. “Don’t think for a minute this is just another example of obsolete dairy cows being surrendered to another industry to make shoe leather, car seats or even taco meat. We’re talking about perfectly viable, prime-of-service-life dairy cows with years of production otherwise ahead of them.

“Yes, they’re being slaughtered, but they will remain a dairy product from factory farm to consumer gullet.”

“This is the biggest technological and public relations breakthrough the industry has achieved since it figured out how to turn a calf into a 1,000-pound animal in a few months and convinced Americana that milk was a natural and healthy food source,” noted industry observer Dick Marlin.  “I can’t wait for the updated ‘Got Milk’ posters.”

Flavors currently under production and lab animal testing include “Prion Pecan,” “Rocky Roast,” “Chocolate Lips,” “Salisbury Strawberry,” “Udder Pecan,” “Hoof Bar Crunch,” “Chocolate Lip Hoofy Dough,” and “Vanilla Offal.”

To improve efficiency, some dairy farms-turned-slaughterhouses will experiment with freezing cattle alive and mechanically separating and processing the resulting corpses directly into ice cream. “This would allow our factory workers to avoid the costly nuisance of carving up struggling animals,” notes Impasse.

Consumers should benefit from “extra iron, Vitamin A, protein and ‘other meat stuff’ when the meat-infused ice cream begins to hit store shelves, probably around July 4.

“We don’t think consumers should have to choose between a cool, refreshingly sweet dairy treat and a satisfying serving of upper-food-chain protein,” said Impasse. “Starting this summer, that terrible choice will be behind us.”

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Originally posted 2009-02-16 22:09:41. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

But the wives aren’t entering the fray over any concern for the proletariat downtrodden. Instead, they fear that arousing their husbands from their slumber of impotence could mark an end to a period of blissfully platonic inactivity that began in 2005 when an arbitrator agreed that MPS didn’t have to provide free Viagra to the union.

The MPS estimates the cost of providing the penis-stiffening drug at nearly $800,000 per year, or enough to employ about a dozen teachers at first-year rates. The MPS argues it can’t afford such frivolous expenditures during the difficult economic conditions that are threatening the district.

The MTEA doesn’t see things that way.

Teachable moment - forget the apple, tell the kids to bring us Viagra

“What’s more important, the gainful employment of a mere 12 of our brothers and sisters, or restoring all of our male members to the aggressive and vigorous sexual lifestyles they deserve,” asked MTEA spokesman Meat Haggard.

But Lucille Frigidpillow, the leader of the teachers wives group that has stepped forward to side with the MSD in opposing the restoration of free Viagra, painted a bleak portrait of married life should Viagra return to the scene.

“Back in 2005, we were granted what we call a sexual parole from our husbands, and we’ve been savoring every minute of it,” she said. “Now I’ve got ladies calling me in a panic, terrified about what this could mean.”

“If you saw what my husband looks like wearing nothing but his back hair and his hemorrhoids, believe me, you’d take this case seriously,” she added.

Dr Windy Brightgarten, an organic psychiatrist and doctorate in women’s literature said that the wives have a case. “There is ample clinical evidence to support the fears these ladies are expressing,” she said.

“The sudden addition of Viagra to a happily platonic marriage is often like giving a spoiled toddler a loaded revolver. Just because he doesn’t know how to use it doesn’t mean he can’t be very, very dangerous with it if it’s loaded,” she added.

An attorney for the wives group said consensus was still possible. “Both sides are in full agreement that petty, self-indulgent creature comforts should come well before the potential employment of a measly 12 teachers,” he said.

“The only question is whether it will be free boner bills or maybe just an annual cash bonus that is provided on the backs of the taxpayer and fellow union members. Either way, I’m confident the true spirit of solidarity will win the day, as it usually does when a good union puts its best minds to it.”

Originally posted 2010-08-08 20:55:25. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

“Normally, in the continental United States, there are about three accidents per month involving general aviation aircraft. In Alaska, there are even more – they average 10 per month up there,” said NTSB spokeswoman Harsher Abdomen.

In both cases, “No one really cares,” she noted. “These are small, private planes, usually with propeller engines. The traveling masses don’t use them and therefore, accidents involving them just don’t hold their attention.”

“When a GA plane goes down in Alaska – in remote, rugged terrain, often with limited visibility, not only do they care even less, they would almost expect it, assuming they were even made aware of it,” she added.

“If they don’t get worked up about a private jet crash at Teterboro (outside of New York City) they sure aren’t going to give a hoot when a prop plane goes down in flyover country or in an even less relevant place like Alaska,” she explained.

So when Monday’s crash of the DeHavilland DHC-3 Otter spawned hysterical, nationwide news coverage and drew hordes of attention-seeking aviation pundits out of the woodwork in the manner one would expect only after a major airline crash, the NTSB made it a point of its investigation to understand why.

After just three days of analysis, the agency thinks it already knows: the presence of former U.S. Senator Ted Stevens. Stevens, one of the most successful pork-barrel politicians in U.S. history, served in the U.S. senate for more than four decades.

With members of Congress installed, the NTSB thinks even crashes of antiquated single-engine aircraft in dismal Alaskan flying conditions could continue to land needed media attention.

“We usually hate to rush to judgment, but after a careful and impartial analysis of the data we’ve recovered from this accident, we’re confident in our early conclusion that the presence of Ted Stevens – and only the presence of Ted Stevens – is what garnered this GA accident the attention it has captured in the national media,” said Abdomen in a statement released by the NTSB.

Seeking to move swiftly on its findings, the NTSB has recommended to the FAA that a member of Congress be required on every G.A. flight within the United States.

“The loss of every aircraft is a tragedy,” read the NTSB statement. “Therefore, each is deserving of full media and regulatory scrutiny.”

Considering the vast number of GA flights per day, the NTSB says that the proposed regulations could be satisfied by using former senators, as Stevens was, as well as “active and former U.S. Representatives, whose lives are also routinely perceived to be of more value than the average citizen’s and therefore more deserving of a full-bore accident investigation when involved in a crash. This recommendation will save lives by diverting rightful attention to every crash, because every crash will have a current or active member of U.S. Congress on board.”

The NTSB noted in an aside that an additional benefit of the proposal would be to “organically induce a de facto term limit among at least a portion of Congress, determined on an impartial and indeed random basis. There are several GA crashes per month. Although not all produce fatalities, the Congressional herd will nonetheless be thinned.”

The NTSB has asked the FAA to respond within 30 days to its recommendation, but it cannot compel the FAA to take action. In the past, the FAA has complained that the NTSB has made suggestions that are not feasible or even possible.

Although the FAA declined to say whether it would ultimately implement the proposal, it did issue a statement agreeing to test the policy using disgraced windbag and current U.S. Congressman Charles Rangel.

Originally posted 2010-08-13 09:58:00. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Fecal Harpy, a spokeswoman for former Vice President Dick Cheney, said Obama’s decision to release the memos had forced Cheney and other members of the Bush administration to counter with their own disclosures of sensitive information. Cheney was a tireless advocate of waterboarding in the aftermath of 9-11.

“We hate to do this, because we respect HIPAA, but we feel we have no choice. What we can confirm today is that yes, Khalid was waterboarded 183 times but no, this was not simply the vicious indulgence of the understandable urge to torture the man responsible for 9-11. Khalid had a horrible case of head lice when he entered our custody – the worst we’d ever seen – and he had awful dandruff, too. He urgently needed treatment.”

HIPAA is the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, which protects the privacy of patient information.

"Many tens of billions" of head lice made a home in the terrorist's hair, according to the CIA

“When anyone becomes a prisoner of the United States – domestic or otherwise – his or her health care becomes the responsibility of our government,” Harpy continued. “In Khalid’s case, his head lice was so bad, we were concerned about blood loss. He had lots of hair, which gives the lice countless places to hide, but it was still our obligation to do our best to ease his suffering.”

Vance Icehorse, a former CIA officer, confirmed Harpy’s account. “We mixed in several medicinal shampoos with the water that we applied during his waterboardings,” he said. “In exchange for his free head lice and dandruff treatment, he seemed suddenly willing to offer up strategic information about the Al Qaeda network.”

Icehorse said that even after 150 treatments, Mohammed was still plagued by head lice, although the dandruff had subsided. “Much like the Al Qaeda hosts they snack on, this strain of head lice become deeply entrenched and difficult to root out, but we were determined to continue the treatment until he was fully cured,” he said.

“As it turns out, it took 183 sessions, but Khalid now has the cleanest hair of anyone in the custody of the U.S. Justice System, and that’s not something he could say when we initially acquired him.”

Waterboarding is a controversial interrogation technique in which water is poured over a subject’s plastic- or cloth-wrapped face to simulate drowning. It has been used to wrest information – real and imagined – from prisoners since at least the time of the Inquisition.

When asked why the CIA didn’t simply shave Mohammed’s head to treat the virulent head lice, Icehorse said, “We did make that option available to him, but the lice were so bad we would have had to scalp him, so he chose to go the waterboarding route. Who would have thought it would have taken so many applications?”

Originally posted 2009-04-20 18:40:27. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Although the survey covered only 97 men, researchers were confident in the sample size thanks to long-standing suspicions that being morbidly obese was not helpful to prospective philanderers and possibly even a hindrance.

“‘Morbid’ means dead,” said Smaller Malady, MD, FACS. “If you’re dead, you can’t have sex.”

“Or,” he clarified, “I should say, you can’t initiate sex.”

But the survey revealed that the connection is not only explained by the blatantly obvious but by the ordinarily obvious – and sinister – as well.

According to Dr. Malady, careful analysis of the data, which he said had been subjected to peer review “by scientist and non-scientist alike,” revealed a number of explanatory factors.

Studies have consistently shown that fat acts as a drag on sexual performance

“It seems if one cannot locate his own reproductive organs, one is less likely to successfully initiate a sexual event with another person, or, at the least, have less confidence in their ability to do so,” he said.

The survey also revealed a more troubling link between weight loss among the morbidly obese and newfound sexual prowess: “Several morbidly obese men indicated weight loss enabled them to keep apace with and eventually overtake quarry during hostile sexual encounters,” noted Malady. “In the past, such efforts usually ended in frustration, tachycardia and, far too often, a trip to urgent care. With weight loss, there is a marked improvement not only in capture rates, but in the subsequent performance.”

Participants in the survey all benefitted from their rapid weight losses via gastric bypass surgery, which likely accounts for the dramatic turnaround in their rutting skills, Malady said. As a result, Malady may propose a two-in-one surgical procedure in the future.

“While we’re performing the gastric bypass, we could easily enhance the patient’s [reproductive organ] with some of the fat we vacuum out of the bowels. Not only would the patient awake a much thinner, healthier man, he’d also find himself with a significantly enhanced member.”

Originally posted 2009-01-05 18:45:38. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Now, barely a month later and on the first day of the New Year, the list has been revised, with the government suggesting alternate courses of action for the first time ever. The unprecedented move is being taken in light of rapidly deteriorating economic conditions.

“Maintaining the list was always a hilarious waste of taxpayer money,” admitted Jail M. Swim, acting administrator of U.S. General Services Administration, which oversees the list. “After all, the list was always a reflection of pie-in-the sky wistfulness more than any serious acknowledgement of personal responsibility.”

But Swim insisted the continuing economic crisis demanded action in unconventional quarters. “We think we have an opportunity to catch some folks’ attention to very pressing needs in the New Year,” he said.

While underlying economic conditions are nowhere near as critical as the public’s perception of them, Swim said the government had abandoned any hope of reversing the effects of the 24-hour doomsday media cycle, in which pundits, self-anointed experts and social-media mavens incessantly admonish each other and the general public to prepare for the “Great Depression of Ought Nine.”

“It has a lemming-like affect,” he said. Once the stampede toward the cliff has started, it’s very difficult to reverse. The resulting disaster is just as real as one that was begun organically rather than through hyped-up, self-feeding and ignorant paranoia. At this point, we have no choice but to treat the effect, and give up on the cause.”

One of those steps, he said, was encouraging more personal responsibility. “We want to encourage people to take ownership, where they can, in the problems they will face in the upcoming Depression.” [editor’s note, capitalizing “Depression” is an important aspect in the 24-hour doomsday media cycle’s toolkit]

“We want to augment whimsical New Year’s Resolutions, which no one ever follows through on anyway, and make them into realistic suggestions and action items for the tough times that lie ahead.”

The following table contains the original resolutions and the government’s updated recommendations.

Originally posted 2009-01-01 15:26:33. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Recently, Arizona announced plans to sell up to 50 state-owned government building and then lease them back over a period of decades before eventually repurchasing them. In essence, the plan calls for Arizona to mortgage the buildings that house its state government.

Since many find the idea of paying rent on buildings previously owned free and clear by taxpayers distasteful, the Obama administration is being careful to differentiate its own plan from Arizona’s.

“We’re not changing ownership of the White House,” explains White House spokesman Robert Gibbs. “If we did, for one thing, that might affect my employment, so that was a non-starter.”

Instead, several rooms in the White House will be opened up to the public, in Bed and Breakfast fashion. However, customers shouldn’t expect backcountry prices. According to a promotional pamphlet released by the White House, lodgings in the esteemed Lincoln Bedroom can be fetched for $95,000 per night.

Used for Clinton-era favor gaining, the Lincoln bedroom is now literally for sale

“This is an appropriate price point commensurate with our need to address the deficit and the costs incurred in securing temporary security clearance and agent staffing for our valued guests,” said Gibbs.

He added, however, that the White House was working on discounted packages in which “for a modest fee, inner city and rural poor folks can be our guests as well.” These guests, Gibbs confirmed, would be housed in battered FEMA trailers that are veterans of the New Orleans campaign. The trailers will be  “strategically hidden from view” on the White House grounds.

Despite discounted pricing, Gibbs stressed the guests housed in trailers will “still be able to tell their friends, families and what-not that they spent the night at the White House.”

While patrons of the trailer package will be limited to the confines of their accommodations plus a 150-second tour of a rosebush dating to the Reagan administration, clients of the Lincoln Bedroom package will enjoy a much more lavish experience, including meals prepared by the White House culinary staff and an invitation to observe “no less than one” staff meeting. (Guests wishing to take advantage of the latter will have to sign non-disclosure agreements).

Lincoln guests will also be guaranteed to have their photos taken with at least one cabinet-level administrator, and possibly the president if he’s available. In a lighter touch, they will also be given blacklights and invited to participate in a “spot the stain” competition in which contestants vie to see who can find the most Clinton-era blemishes that still adorn certain furnishings, carpets and draperies.

In reply to critics who say the ploy threatens to cheapen the White House, Gibbs said, “This may be a cheap gimmick, but we’ve got a very expensive problem, which is the out of control deficit my boss has created – I mean that he inherited from Bush.

“We’re already booked solid into the first half of Obama’s second administration, and calculations show this could generate nearly $1 billion over two full terms. That money is going straight back to the taxpayers.”

Originally posted 2009-07-29 20:35:13. Republished by Blog Post Promoter