Look! It's the Sick Humor Man!

It would stand to reason that the year I'm not able to get a flu shot (along with most of the rest of the U.S.), I would immediately feel like I'm coming down with the flu. Curse you, British pharmaceutical manufacturers and your feelthy laboratories!

I've spent the past two days feeling logy, confused and lethargic, which has left me feeling less than creative. (And what else is new? Nothing.)

Come to think of it, I could be having an allergic reaction to the presidential campaign, but I doubt it. When that happens, I'm more into projectile vomiting and temporary blindness than muscle stiffness and headaches.

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Rip Rense on Pittsburgh's answer to Martha Mitchell:

Teresa Heinz Kerry, shut up! All three of you! Just shut up! Shut the hell up! Wait till you're First Lady, then you can shoot your Botox-injected mouth off all you want. ...

Lady Teresa --- I dunno, her body language suggests royalty --- loves to yap. She loves to let her tongue flap, and the breeze that emerges is usually entertaining enough. Problem is, the Repugnicans quickly turn it into blowback. ... She might as well just giftwrap her gaffes and send them straight to Karen Hughes and Karl Rove.

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I was afraid of this; Ray Charles' biographer, David Ritz, says in Slate that the new movie about the late musician sands off all of his rough edges (and thus distorts the truth):

The problem ... is that "Ray" is a saccharine movie while Ray himself was anything but a saccharine man. He was a raging bull. Sentimentalizing his story may make box office sense, but, to my mind, it trivializes the compelling complexity of his character. ....

"Ray" is about Ray, and its attempt to define his character. In many ways, the definition is accurate. Foxx brilliantly captures Ray's energy and contradictions. Yet those contradictions are not allowed to stand. The contradictions must be resolved, Ray must live happily ever after. The finale implies that, for all his promiscuity, he is back with Della, the true love of his life, and that, with his heroin habit behind him, it's smooth sailing ahead. The paradoxical strands of his life are tied up into a neat package, honoring the hackneyed biopic formula with a leave-'em-smiling Hollywood ending.

I'm equally concerned about the upcoming Bobby Darin movie, in which Kevin Spacey apparently sings Darin's songs (Jamie Foxx lipsynchs to Ray Charles' music in "Ray"), but I'm willing to give it a chance.

I still can't believe that there's a big enough audience out there to see a movie about Bobby Darin, but I'll take what I can get.

(Also, it's nice to see that with all of the trouble in the world, my big concerns are whether Bobby Darin and Ray Charles are accurately portrayed by Hollywood.)

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After nearly 30 years of reading "Andy Capp," I've finally seen a funny one. What's next? Dogs and cats, living together?

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From the "Only in Fayettenam" file comes this story in the Uniontown Herald-Standard:

State police arrested a 29-year-old Normalville woman Thursday for allegedly soliciting men in a Yahoo Messenger Internet chat room to come to another woman's home to engage in sex and other activities.

Tracie Lee Grimm was charged with criminal solicitation to commit rape, recklessly endangering another person, identity theft, stalking and two counts of criminal use of a communication facility. ...

Police said Grimm allegedly posed as a 58-year-old Champion woman in the chat room and told the men to come to the victim's Cramer Road residence and rape her when she opened the door. Several males appeared at the victim's residence, but she did not answer the door, police said. The victim also received more than 100 telephone calls from men throughout the United States, police said.

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Sorry I missed Thursday's Kerry rally, if this report by J.D. Prose in the Beaver County Times was any indication:

Only a handful of Bush supporters were on hand to protest against Kerry. They were more than countered by a tall woman dressed like the character "Wonder Woman," whose handwritten sign let everyone know that she wished to wrap Bush in her "lasso of truth."

She can wrap me in her lasso of truth any time. Heigh-yo!