10 points to the person that has the best joke by midnight: Disney closes Small World

I just learned that there is a Cheatham County in Tennessee. Naturally, this caused me to go Googling around for some other county names, and I soon discovered that there is a "Dewey County" in Oklahoma and another in South Dakota. Alas, there is apparently no "Howe County" anywhere in the United States. There are, however, cities and townships named "Howe" in Indiana, Oklahoma, Texas and Pennsylvania. One of those municipalities needs to get together with Cheatham County and one of the Dewey Counties to form some sort of sister city/county arrangement of Dewey, Cheatham & Howe.

Apparently, Craigslist flagged my post for removal, and it got gone in a hurry.

I don’t understand why.

Link not only probably NSFW, it’s just generally in poor taste.  There. You’ve been warned.

View this photo

FEMA: the federal agency so ridicluous, you can’t really satirize it. Their latest stunt? A fake news conference:

The U.S. government’s main disaster-response agency apologized on Friday for having its employees pose as reporters in a hastily called news conference on California’s wildfires that no news organizations attended.

Heh!

FEMA “issued the apology after The Washington Post published details of the Tuesday briefing.” Shocking! Somebody noticed! Who’d have thunk it? Jeez, these people can’t even be incompetent competently.

“We can and must do better, and apologize for this error in judgment,” FEMA deputy administrator Harvey Johnson, who conducted the briefing, said in a statement. “Our intent was to provide useful information and be responsive to the many questions we have received.”

“Error in judgment”? LOL! In what conceivable universe could anyone have thought that this was the correct judgment, so as to make such an “error” possible?

No actual reporter attended the news conference in person, agency spokesman Aaron Walker said.

A spokeswoman for Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, who has authority over FEMA, called the incident “inexcusable and offensive to the secretary.”

“We have made it clear that stunts such as this will not be tolerated or repeated,” spokeswoman Laura Keehner said. She said the department was looking at the possibility of reprimanding those responsible.

Oh, that’s good. Better yet, why don’t you set up a committee to study the issue of whether a reprimand would be appropriate. And then create a panel to read that committee’s report. And then ignore it and give the offending parties the Congressional Medal of Freedom instead.

God bless America.

…but road-tripping USC alum Jonathan Tu has the scoop on the biggest upset of all.

Heh.

I just submitted this to The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks:

Heh.

I’d love to see the insurance claim on this one:

[A squirrel] had been gnawing on overhead power lines connected to a transformer directly above the 2006 Toyota Camry.

“The squirrel chewed through the wire, was set on fire, fell down directly to where the car was,” Tony Millar said. “The squirrel, on fire, slid into the engine compartment and blew up the car.”

Heh.

Chris H. writes: “If one squirrel chews on power lines, I’m guessing more do. And if millions of squirrels nationwide are chewing on power lines, I’m guessing this isn’t the only one to chew through and light itself on fire. Is there a national crisis in which flaming squirrels are plummeting from our skies? If so, it’s being dramatically underreported by the media. I, for one, am worried.”

Patterico points to another example of this unrecognized crisis: “About 6 months ago, the last time our power went out for any substantial period of time, it was due to a squirrel who died a fiery death in the transformer.”

Quick, someone ask Rudy Giuliani what his plan is for dealing with this threat! AMERICA MUST BE PREPARED TO COMFORT THE AERIAL FLAMING-SQUIRREL MENACE!

(Hat tip: InstaPundit.)

I don’t support gay-bashing, but I do support LSU-bashing, and, um, well, this is just funny. Offensive and juvenile and politically incorrect, yes, but funny. Ha ha ha.

From comments yesterday (modified slightly for family-friendliness):

Did you hear the one about the guy
who has this dog, and he says, "My dog Max is the biggest USC Trojan
football fan of any damn dog in the country. Every year when USC plays
Notre Dame, he gets so excited! Every time ‘SC scores a touchdown, he
jumps up and down and barks, and when USC wins the
game, he does back-flips and cartwheels."

So the guy’s buddy says, "Well, what’s he do when Notre Dame beats USC?"

The guy says, "I don’t know. He’s only 6 years old."

The "NDCHOOCHOO" blog offers some funny "story lines" for the USC-Notre Dame game:

The Streak: USC last lost to Notre Dame in 2001. That loss will not be forgotten by USC, however, as 9th Year Senior Chauncey Washington was just a 3rd year sophomore back then, and will recount his expereinces with the team, after his Geritol.

Snooping Around: Yes, USC supporter and mascot, Snoop Dogg will make the trip out the Notre Dame for the game. Apparently, Desmond Reed told him that there was some really "funky grass" at Notre Dame, and Snooop wanted to check it out for himself. …

The Fall of Troy: USC is no longer in contention for the National Championship. In fact, they are only in third place in their own conference. To make matters worse, as it stands now, with UCLA’s win last season, USC is only the second best team in their own city. In stark contrast, Notre Dame enters the game atop the South Bend polls.

Heh.

He also refers to USC’s injured quarterback as "John David Steven Morris Upton Booty." Again, heh.

Someday, humans will marry robots, says a British researcher:

The University of Maastricht in the Netherlands is awarding a doctorate to a researcher who wrote a paper on marriages between humans and robots.

David Levy, a British artificial intelligence researcher at the college, wrote in his thesis, "Intimate Relationships with Artificial Partners," that trends in robotics and shifting attitudes on marriage are likely to result in sophisticated robots that will eventually be seen as suitable marriage partners.

The robots won’t marry us for love… they’ll marry us so they can eat our parents’ medicine when we aren’t looking!!!

This is a somewhat interesting iPhone story. 

Heh.

Some people say Joe Lieberman is not liberal enough. I say he’s not literal enough!

Justice Clarence Thomas: "About the only way I would get invited to Columbia is if I was a Middle East dictator with nuclear weapons." Heh! (Hat tip: InstaPundit.)