“Klotz” As In “Blood”

Atlanta, GA — Investigators are looking into who altered pro wrestler Chris Benoit’s Wikipedia entry to mention his wife’s death hours before authorities discovered the bodies of the couple and their 7-year-old son. Benoit’s Wikipedia entry was altered early Monday to say that the wrestler had missed a match two days earlier because of his wife’s death.

Benoit strangled his wife and son during the weekend, placing Bibles next to their bodies, before hanging himself on the cable of a weight-machine in his home, authorities said. — Local6.com

Nobody was available at WWE offices to comment for the record, but one evidently irritated employee dismissed the matter as “media hype.” “Who care about Benoit, anyway?” he asked rhetorically. “Another steroid freak with the brain of a mollusk, just smart enough to lift weights and shave his chest, too dumb not to hurt himself. We got lots more where he came from. Critters like that breed like locusts.”

About 4 years ago my dentist attempted to fill a yawning sinkhole in my lower, driver’s side wisdom tooth. He failed. Even after strapping me to the nitrous oxide machine and administering 6 shots of Novacaine, I flailed around and cringed in agony at the slightest touch.

“You’re the biggest pussy I ever worked on!” he fumes, dropping his drill. He steps into the hallway. “Hey, Lois!” he hollers to his assistant, “Bring me the dictionary from my desk — I wanna look up the word ‘pussy’ and see if Klotz’s picture is under it!  Pussy with bad teeth!”

He ends up putting a temporary cap over the stinking cavernous pit and telling me I would need to call him to set up an appointment with somebody who would knock me out first. “I gave you enough shit I should be able to cut off your head and toss it on the highway,” he says. “No way I’m touching you with your eyes open. But we gotta get that tooth!”

I never called, of course, so when it startes throbbing and I develop these headaches and fevers, last month, he looks at me says there’s another cavity next to the first one thanks to the rot spreading. I ask him to fill it. He reads my record, starts muttering darkly, says, “We’ll try — this isn’t the same tooth, so maybe you won’t piss your pants this time.” Three shots and 20 minutes of gas later, he gives up again.

That’s why last week I find myself in a dental chair surrounded by my dentist, an oral surgeon, and two grim dental assistants. I had agreed that if they couldn’t fill the wisdom tooth and/or the molar, they could yank both: alternative was root canal work, and for what? The four loomed menacingly as the intravenous started…..

Guido tells me afterwards that it took 19 shots of Novacaine and that I never closed my eyes the whole time. Unconscious, I fought the bastards like Sunnies and Shiites, and evidently at one point grabbed the dental assistant by the balls, sending him off to the sidelines. They ended up yanking one tooth and filling the other. I spit blood all night.

I had apologized in advance for the misbehavior I was sure I would exhibit. This isn’t the first time. Fifteen years ago I had two wisdom teeth and a molar from the passenger side pulled, and that surgeon told Guido I was by far the least cooperative patient she’d ever seen. “He’s gonna need the other side done before long,” she told Guido, as we left. “When you’re ready, DON’T CALL ME. Find somebody else.”

That particular surgeon had a chair with leather restraints on the arms. Pretty damn kinky, I remember thinking. But that probably saved her her own teeth.

I also swallowed the goddam cap. The dentist wants me to find it, said I should check the toilet closely after every dump for the next week because if it doesn’t come out, they’ll need to go in and get it. I’m sure he’s telling me this just to make me play with my fetid shit for his own perverted revenge. He IS a dentist, you know.

So remember, kids: Ignore your teeth and they’ll go away.

Sweden’s convicted rapists are entitled to have pornography in their cells, the Supreme Administrative Court judged on Monday.

Prison authorities argued that the use of pornography would disrupt the treatment being given to sex offenders. It was also claimed that porn would be a security risk at the jail……[but] the district administrative appeals court ruled that the principle of freedom of information was more important than the potential threat posed by the prisoners being allowed access to pornography. — The Local

I have nobody to call in Sweden, but I know a few criminal attorneys — that means attorneys who practice criminal law, not lawyers who are criminals (or so they say) — like Duke Cheatum of Dewey Cheatum and Howe, who’s willing to express an opinion.

“The hell’s the difference?” he asks. “These guys are locked up with nothing to hump but their own fists or their cellmate’s ass. They’re just as likely to get all hot and bothered watching Schreck as Jenna Jameson.”

What about the therapy they’re supposed to be getting? Doesn’t prison porn threaten canceling everything out?

“You mean sex therapy actually works on your planet? ‘Cause in 22 years of defending these scumwads, and begging judges to spare my clients’ asses from jail by sending ‘em to a shrink, I haven’t seen so much as a single one who changed his ways because of his ‘therapy’.”

Well, what does work?

“Castration. Sickness. Old age and too much liquor. Salt peter in the gruel. Oh, and Death.”

Nice, Duke. What kind of porn do they usually like?

“Depends on the individual perv, just like the population that isn’t behind bars. Yet. Mostly what they can’t get. Like women. Sometimes farm animals, if that’s what they’re used to.”

Talk about getting your clients off. So you’re okay with them watching porn. There’s no pesky moral considerations, right?

“Fuckin’ A. Keeps ‘em outta trouble. Chills ‘em down. A lifer slappin’ the ham in his own bunk is less likely to go rimmin’ the new kid. Less assaults, fewer lockdowns, reduction in AIDS cases, less money on doctors and pills. Do the math: Porn in the pokey controls the cost of incarceration. Hey, gotta go.”

Talking morals to a criminal lawyer is like talking etiquette to a jackal. But he has a point. Is porn any more degenerate and more corrupt than 24 hours of Man Coulter and Fox News? Or the system that keep them all in business?

Now and then I tune in ACCU-Radio to hear some music at work. Rude shock today: they’re participating in an industry-wide “Day of Silence.”

AccuRadio is participating in today’s industry-wide “Day of Silence” event to draw attention to royalty rate increases that could shut down Internet radio. Please take a brief moment today (if you’re a U.S. citizen) to call your two Senators and your representative in the House of Representatives to ask them to co-sponsor the “Internet Radio Equality Act.” Click the SaveNetRadio button below to learn how.

To learn more about this issue, you can also listen to a one-hour talk show, featuring AccuRadio founder Kurt Hanson, (every hour on the hour today) at KCRW.com

Thanks from all of us at AccuRadio… and we’ll be back to regular music programming tomorrow (at least for a couple more weeks)!

Why couldn’t this happen to talk radio? And up the ante: let’s have a Year of Silence.

COLUMBIA, S.C. — Police on Wednesday were investigating how a naked couple fell 50 feet from the roof of a downtown office building to their deaths.

The bodies were found on the road by a passing cabdriver around 5 a.m. Wednesday.

Clothing was discovered on the roof, leading authorities to suspect the man and woman, in their early 20s, may have been having sex. Their identities were not released. — Fox News

A front page story from Sunday’s NY Times addresses deteriorating conditions in Iran, noting how one tried-and-true method to deal with them consists of shutting down critics, dissidents, and anybody else seen as straying too far from the orthodoxy:

Young men wearing T-shirts deemed too tight or haircuts seen as too Western have been paraded bleeding through Tehran’s streets by uniformed police officers who force them to suck on plastic jerrycans, a toilet item Iranians use to wash their bottoms. In case anyone misses the point, it is the official news agency Fars distributing the pictures of what it calls “riffraff.” Far bloodier photographs are circulating on blogs and on the Internet. — Iran-Va-Jahan

(Interesting: the on-line edition of the NY Times omitted this paragraph and the photo! Had to go to an Iranian source to get it.)

Goddam hippie ragheads! Think we should try this in Miami? No doubt the police department would give it a whirl, and certainly the hard-line Cuban right would approve. Just don’t call it “political correctness” — that’s for the liberals!

Naw, that’s not what we’re all about. In this country we like to hear opposing voices. Usually.

Since the start of the Iraq war, more than half the states have decided to lower their flags for 24 hours or more when a local soldier dies in combat.

Opponents of lowering the flag see it as an anti-war gesture that might run counter to federal guidelines, which reserve the action for “officials,” not soldiers. — NY Times

“Opponents” include the current administration. The same reluctance to allow footage of coffins coming home from Iraq is on display once more. The idea that this war has casualties, causes pain, calls for sacrifices, etc., is anathema to the clowns in control of the conflict, as it has the potential make people unhappy, and upset their perverted world-view.

“I think there is a lot of cheap patriotism, and that includes coming from the president,” said Gov. Ted Strickland of Ohio, a Democrat who opposes the war but does not lower flags for killed Ohio soldiers. “I think putting the flag at half-staff is a strong symbolic thing to do. But quite frankly, it’s a fairly easy thing to do. It doesn’t require anything of us either as political leaders or as citizens.”

It’s almost enough to make one admire the Iranians’ candor. Please pass the jerrycans.

Did it ever occur to you that the tanning might be addictive? Two new studies have come to that conclusion, at least tentatively.

“…..the [tanning] hormone has several parts, and one of them is an opiate-like compound. People get out in the sun and they feel good. It’s a feeling of euphoria….It seems to be an addictive behavior like alcohol or smoking, although I don’t know if it’s as strong.'’ — Dr. Robert Kirsner, vice chairman of dermatology, UM School of Medicine — Miami Hurled

I read something like this, I make it a point to bump into my good friend Tanya Hyde, president of the Haulover Beach chapter of Tanorexics Anonymous. I catch up with her and a few chapter members at the Hollywood Liquor and Rubber Balls sport bar last night. (Daytime, she’s on the beach, tanning. Natch.) They’re celebrating Summer Solstice — Longest Day of the Year, and the first day of summer.

“Sure,” she laughs, her teeth dazzling ivory against the deepest tan this side of Nipsy Russell. “I saw it. Like, duh? This is something new?”

I maintain decent color year round, but next to Tanya and her crew, I’m pale as Casper’s ass. It’s unnerving.

“Look,” she sighs, “we’ve been through this before. See Helios over there? He’s had something like 250 basal and squamish cancer cells removed. Every single one is the result of sun damage. But he’s on the beach no less than 6 hours a day, and always between 10 and 3 when the sun’s the strongest. Why? He’s an addict. Hooked on rays.”

Great tee shirt slogan.

“Yeah. Like, ‘Roast and Boast.’ ‘Baked is Beautiful.’ And look over there — that’s Ra Ra, dancing. How old you suppose she is?”

Who can tell? She has the body and moves of a teenage go-go girl, topped off with the face of Grandma Moses. Maybe she worries a lot?

“Ra is 28. Some dermatologists call it solar urticaria, others prefer polymorphic light eruption or photodermatosis. Basically she’s allergic to sunshine: it turns her flesh into prune skin. Think that stops her? Get real. Tell some smack shooter than needles give him pimples and see if it sets him straight. Ha!”

The sizzle of sun on the skin. The pressure of rays pushing down on your body. The crisp heat of the afterburn…..

“Yeah,” she says, a sly, dirty grin splitting her shining cheeks. “Tune out, tan up, turn on.” Her skin is darker and creamier than the pint of Guinness I’m drinking. How is this possible? “And we go out in a blaze of color, don’t we? It’s all about how you look against the pale sheets in the pine box.”

Tanya, that’s sick. But you know, I like it.

“You know where to find us, beach bum. You need to quit that desk job and live the life. You’re just a ‘rexic in a white man’s skin, I’ve told you that.”

Holy melanoma, Tanya, you’re supposed to be a self-help group, not an enabler! Not a goddam pusher!

“I am helping you, silly. You just don’t know it yet.” She downs her margarita. “Gotta go. Celebration of the first full day of summer tomorrow starts at sunrise, and goes all day. Bring Guido — redheads need to replenish their freckles! See you there?”

If you’re into words, technology, and the interaction among human thought, human action, and language, there’s a fascinating blog called “Pretty Good On Paper” that’s worth more than an occasional glance. Yesterday, as part of an ongoing series, Caveblogem’s post analyzed the language of “Klotz” As In “Blood” and reports his conclusions. I’m amazed, but this sort of enterprise is one that fascinates me, and I envy his mental agility and technical prowess to have created it.

Thanks again to Dayngr for calling this to my attention.

Inspired by this ongoing symposium, I respectfully offer today’s Dilbert:

Lighten up, folks. Have a drink. Who in this invective fest thinks they’re changing anybody else’s mind? Or isn’t that the point?

While Mr GreenJeans circumnavigates the globe, boring the snot out of people with recitations of his inconvenient diction, a major crisis brews in his own Tennessee back yard:

Jack Daniels water supply is running low and putting the century-plus whiskey business in jeopardy.

The water source for the whiskey is a spring flowing through the Jack Daniels property. For more than 140 years this spring, known as Cave Spring, has been the water supply for Jack Daniels. It is one of the most essential parts of the whiskey’s recipe.

“If we can’t use what it takes to make Jack Daniels, I suspect we won’t make Jack Daniels until we get all the ingredients we need,” [distillery manager Jack] Hamilton said. — WBKO.co

What fresh hell is this? As (breathlessly) reported earlier, Mexico’s blue agave plants are getting torn up, threatening the tequila industry, and the price of barley is skyrocketing, making German beer unaffordable. But hell — them’s furriners! Jack Daniels is Merkin as smallpox and scalpin’ Injuns!

If I have to go back to drinking hair tonic and anti-freeze, I’m gonna be one unhappy zombie. Shit — I gave that up around the same time the short-skirted counselor popped me for selling oregano joints. What was his name again?

Bad news worse:

Diageo Plc said today it was reviewing brewing operations in Ireland after media reported the drinks giant may quit the Dublin city centre site where Guinness has been brewed for almost 250 years.

The review was at a “very early stage” and a report in the Sunday Independent newspaper that the company was preparing to move from its landmark St James’s Gate site on the banks of Dublin’s River Liffey was “speculation”, Diageo added.

The site, where Arthur Guinness took out a 9,000 year lease on a disused brewery in 1759, has grown into what the brewer now describes as “a prime 64 acre (25 hectare) slice of Dublin”. — ireland.com

(Like the 9,000 year lease? We need to work these into the new property tax adjustment bills up for voter review in January).

So let’s see. Jack Daniels — gone! A tequila shortage. German beer priced out of range. Guinness brewed in Elbonia, or someplace. And I’m supposed to worry about global warming, skin cancer, Newt Gingrich for president, or a new Marlins stadium?

Excuse my sorry 80-proof ass, but there’s something goin’ on, and you don’t know what it is…….do you, Mr. Jones?