Word of the Day: PRODIGAL (prod'-i-guhl), ADJECTIVE: Wasteful or recklessly extravagant.

Now that more details have come out about the Eliot Spitzer scandal, I am truly outraged. When I first saw the MySpace page of Spitzer's call girl, Ashley Dupre, I was all set to commend Governor Spitzer on his excellent taste (she is quite a comely woman). But then I read the numbers. He was with Ashley 8 times and spent a whopping $80,000 in total. The Government has often been criticized for overspending and running up huge deficits. The Government notoriously awards contracts to the highest bidder and ends up paying ridiculously high prices, like $4,000 for a custom-made hammer, or $150 for a screw. Now we find out that Spitzer was buying them for $10,000 each! The scariest part of the whole story is not that Spitzer is an immoral, licentious hypocrite, but that this prodigal Governor has been controlling New York State's budget for the past year. If he is willing to spend $10,000 for an hour of sex, how much has he been paying for new bridges or road repairs?

Don't get me wrong- I have no doubt that the lovely Ashley Dupre will use this notoriety to catapult herself into stardom. She will follow in the footsteps of other pop icons like Vanessa Williams, Pamela Anderson, and Paris Hilton, and will stand as a shining example of the American dream. She will show the world that even without any talent, one can succeed with just the right combination of a hot body and a complete lack of self respect. But even so, there is no way Ashley Dupre was worth $80,000. The first question the press should ask the new Governor David Paterson, is how much he would pay for an hour with Ashley Dupre. This would test his fiscal responsibility.  I have a feeling he would not pay very much, regardless of how good looking she may be. After all, to him, she is nothing more than just another fuzzy, gray blob.

        

Word of the Day: CLANDESTINE (klan-des'-tin), ADJECTIVE: Secret or concealed for purposes of deception.

Time for another quick election update. On the Republican side, the National League Central Division of politics, John McCain managed to heroically overcome absolutely no competition. Each of the other Republicans made a fatal mistake. Mayor Rudy Guliani decided his best strategy was not to campaign at all, and to instead spend 4 months and 40 million dollars vacationing in Florida. Mitt Romney decided to let his 7 wives campaign on his behalf. And Mike Huckabee decided to keep the name "Huckabee."

The race for the Democratic nomination is much more complicated. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are nearly tied. Obviously, Democrats are having great difficulty deciding whether they want the first black President of the United States, or the first lesbian President of the United States. Adding to the confusion, before the nomination process even started, Florida and Michigan broke the party rules by moving up their primary dates. Everyone agreed that, as punishment, the votes in these states wouldn't count. The candidates didn't campaign in these states (except for Hillary's clandestine campaigning). The candidates took their names off the ballots in these states (except that Hillary left her name on the ballot). Now one of the candidates- I will let you guess which one- wants the votes in Michigan and Florida to count.

The issue is yet to be decided, but it is disturbing that once again Florida may decide the next President of the United States. As everyone knows, Florida consists entirely of Cubans and decrepit, old people. This became a major problem in the 2000 Presidential election, as Florida officials had no idea how to interpret the bizarre ballot results, and America did not know who won the election. Finally, in the landmark case of Bush v. Gore, the Supreme Court decided that all votes for Fidel Castro would go to Al Gore, and all votes for Franklin Roosevelt would count for George W. Bush. Thus the Government had to scrap plans to create a Department of Fake Science, and the war against SUVs turned into the war against Iraq.

        

Word of the Day: OPPROBRIOUS  (uh-proh'-bree-uhs), ADJECTIVE: Outrageously disgraceful or shameful.

Trying to combat sagging newspaper sales, the New York Times has tried hard over the past few years to break into a new industry: the fake news business. To compete with shows like Saturday Night Live's Weekend Update, the John Stewart Show, and the Colbert Report, The New York Times hired writer Jayson Blair, who plagiarized the stories he was too lazy to make up. He was forced to resign in 2004, but a few weeks ago the Times was back at it, making up a juicy story about John McCain having an affair with a female lobbyist. So I am skeptical of anything the Times writes, but today's story seems believable. The paper is reporting that New York Governor Eliot Spitzer was involved in a prostitution ring. And by "involved," I do not mean he was showing the young ladies the immense size of his budgetary cuts. 

Having sex with a prostitute is, of course, behavior completely unbecoming of a Governor. It is much more becoming of a Mayor. Before Jerry Springer's second career in organized redneck boxing, he was forced to resign as Mayor of Cincinnati for being caught with a prostitute (seriously- look it up). In Washington D.C., Mayor Barry was caught with a prostitute AND crack/cocaine. He was nevertheless reelected! But this is the first time a GOVERNOR has ended up resigning in disgrace for the opprobrious act of hiring a prostitute. This may be the end of Eliot Spitzer's marriage, but it doesn't have to be the end of his political career- he just needs to move to Washington, D.C., and run for Mayor.

        

Word of the Day: ELUDE  (i-lood'), VERB: To evade; to avoid or escape by speed, cleverness, trickery, etc.

Road rage is very common, and I am not immune. Like most people, I have hurt my hand pounding on the horn a few times. Like most people, I have spent a few years in jail for assaulting another drivers with a tire iron at a red light. I try not to get annoyed when other drivers make simple mistakes, like misjudging how much room they have when merging. After all, to err is human (and to smite people with the vengeful wrath of God is divine). What DOES irk me, however, is when people drive at exactly the speed limit and refuse to go any faster, regardless of how many cars are backed up behind them or how many traffic lights they miss. Some of these people are old. As Jerry Seinfeld famously pointed out, you would think that people very close to death would be in more of a rush to get where they're going. But even more baffling is that many of these speed-limit drivers are young or middle aged.

My theory is that these people are the hardcore criminals of society- the rapists and murderers. Anyone who has seen the show "Cops," knows that the traffic stop is the only method police use to catch serious criminals. The officer pulls someone over for a minor traffic infraction, runs the license plate, then comes back to the car and says "sorry, John Williams of 142 East Main Street, but you have 8 felony warrants outstanding for bank robbery, distribution of crack, and genocide in Darfur. We could have just gone to 142 East Main Street and arrested you at any time, but we don't actually enforce warrants. We knew that someday you would slip up and roll through a stop sign, or run a red light. So NOW you are going to jail." Thus, smart criminals know that as long as they wear their seat belts, drive at the speed limit, and obey all traffic laws, they can get away with any crime, indefinitely.

Here is another tip for criminals. You may have noticed that criminals in high-speed chases NEVER get away. This is because of the news helicopters tracking the suspect's car. No matter how many police cruisers the criminal manages to elude, he can't outrun a news chopper. So, if you find yourself in a high speed chase, use your cell phone to call in a fake news story to one of the major networks. Make sure the story is truly newsworthy. "I just saw Brittany Spears stumbling through the park, high on crack... and she wasn't wearing any underwear." The news choppers will race off to the park, to cover the story, and with a few Luke Duke maneuvers, you will be home free. Just make sure that for the rest of your life, you drive at exactly the speed limit, no matter how many people behind you are honking their horns and screaming obscenities.

        

Word of the Day: CONDENSE  (kuhn-dens'), VERB: To shorten or abridge.

Driving to Starbucks today, I spotted a man on the side of the road, dressed in army fatigues, holding a sign that read "Iraq veteran- will work for money to feed my family." At first this made me sad, but then it occurred to me that perhaps this man has hit upon a brilliant new job search method. Whereas bulk resume services will charge a hundred dollars to mail out a few hundred resumes, my war veteran friend is getting out his message to thousands of passing drivers, absolutely free. He does not have to cope with the slew of rejection letters that litter the mail of most job hunters. Moreover, if a potential employer is interested, he can get an immediate interview, right there on the side of the road. The interested driver just needs to pull over, roll down the window, and start asking questions: "Excuse me sir, how do you feel your military experience will make you management material? What would you say is your greatest weakness?" In fact, it would not surprise me if this brilliant idea catches on. Perhaps tomorrow the side of the road will be cluttered with men in suits, holding giant signs with their resumes printed on them.

I decided to test whether the strategy works for other searches, such as my search for love. It was difficult to condense my profile into a reasonably sized sign, but I finally went with "SWM seeks LTR; likes long walks on beach , blogging, and hiking." (OK, the only hiking I do is between the couch and refrigerator, but I thought it would make me sound more manly). So I spent the afternoon on the side of the road, holding my sign, and waiting for the beautiful ladies to start pulling over. Unfortunately, it didn't go as well as I had hoped. A few drivers shouted obscenities (but these were mostly men). A few others threw loose change at me, and one even tried to run me down. The war veteran guy got quite a chuckle from that incident. Perhaps I will just stick with eharmoney.

        

Word of the Day: MALINGER  (muh-ling'-ger), VERB: Pretend to be sick or injured to avoid duties.

As a kid, like most little boys, I always dreamed of being a professional athlete someday. But unlike other kids, I never wanted to be a star athlete. I never wanted to be Joe Montana, throwing the winning touchdown in the Superbowl or Kirk Gibson, smacking a huge World Series home run. Instead, I dreamed of being the 3rd stringer that nobody has ever heard of, who sits comfortably at the end of the bench, never gets in a real game, and collects the league minimum salary. I was a smart kid. The league minimum salary in the lowest paying sport, hockey, is now $450,000. For doing absolutely nothing (perhaps fetching Gatorade every so often for the real players) these bench warmers make the same salary as partners in large law firms- lawyers who slave away 90 hours a week and who only see their wives every few months at conjugal visits in the firm trailer. These lucky, nameless, back-ups to the back-ups get paid over four times the salaries of less useful members of society like teachers, doctors, or police officers.

Needless to say, my current hero is Shawn Bates, a hockey "player." If you are not a fan of the New York Islanders hockey team, you have no doubt never heard of Shawn Bates. If you are one of the estimated 423 Americans who IS a fan of the New York Islanders, you have also probably never heard of Shawn Bates. This is because he never plays. A hockey season consists of over 80 games. For several years, Bates would play the first ten or so games and then miss the rest of the season with a groin injury. According to the Islanders' announcers, if not medical science, a man has two groins- a left and a right. So Bates would switch off which one he injured each year. In fact he has had his groin talked about on TV more than any human not named Brittney Spears. This year he added a hip injury to the usual groin ailment and is now out for the season after playing a grand total of 2 games. I am not saying he is a malingerer. Perhaps his injuries are real. But what I do know is that he never plays and makes an annual salary of-I am not making this up-$1,200,000! For the math challenged, that is over a million dollars, enough to afford a huge mansion with a butler (who, needless to say, calls him "Master Bates").

        

Word of the Day: CURMUDGEON  (ker-muhj'-uhn), NOUN: Crusty, ill-tempered, irascible person.

First, I must apologize for last week. I was sick as a dog (No, I am not sure why a dog should be particularly sick) and the doctor warned me to stay in bed and that any blogging could result in severe injury. But now I am better, and I promise to update this blog as much as possible, consistent with my time constraints and lazy temperament.

The weekend news was dominated by the fact that someone staying in a Las Vegas Extended-Stay found some Ricin that a previous guest had left in his room. Ricin is an extraordinarily  toxic substance. It is 1,000 times more lethal than cyanide, and an amount of ricin that would fit on the head of a pin is enough to kill a man. After writing a VERY nasty email to hotels.com, the man brought the ricin to the guy at the front desk, who promptly alerted the FBI.

Imagine the embarrassment of the terrorist who left his ricin in the hotel room. "Honey, where is my ricin. I told you to bring the rest of the bags from the hotel room out to the car! Now how am I supposed to do my terrorism, without my ricin? I am going to get fired when Osama finds out about this. Is that what you want? You want me to get fired? By Allah, you are my least favorite wife!"

The entire incident has reaffirmed my belief that we desperately need an old, wrinkly, Republican, curmudgeon in the White House. We need a cranky old bastard like Dick Cheney, who drinks ricin for breakfast and  whose favorite sports are huntin' and launching missiles at terrorists (and in both cases isn't picky about who he hits). We need someone who can strike fear in the hearts of the terrorists. Someone like John McCain, who is liable to have a bad  war flashback and blow up  Vietnam. I don't care if they listen in on my phone conversations or make abortions punishable by death or make it legal for oil executives to eat illegal aliens. I will be happy as long as our next president  keeps ricin out of my Diet Coke supply. 

        

Word of the Day: TEMERITY (tuh-mer'-i-tee) NOUN: Reckless boldness; rashness.

I love Starbucks. I drink it so much a former boss once asked me if I would like him to skip the middle man and send my paycheck directly to Starbucks.  Unlike Shylock, when you prick me I leak hot caramel macchiato. when I go too long without consuming a heavily caffeinated, venti SOMETHING, I get a splitting headache and I grow a third arm that pops out from my stomach, beats people to death, and steals their coffee. (Caffeine addiction GETS what caffeine addiction WANTS).

One of the reasons I have supported Starbucks for so long is the sheer temerity of building a business around selling a thimble full of coffee and a cup of steamed milk for FIVE DOLLARS! You have to respect that level of audacity. (How do you say chutzpah in Fritalian?). The latest promotion is a drink called the "skinny latte." This beverage has no sugar so, whereas a normal latte contains 1,562 calories, the skinny latte only has 984. This is welcome news to the 84% of America that is disgustingly obese (this figure is based on a scientific observation I recently performed in a local Wal-Mart) because now we can all have an extra toffee-nut-powdered-donut-pancake-surprise with our morning lattes.

Now that the health revolution has hit Starbucks, it is only a matter of time before the company finds a Jared-like spokesman to promote the skinny latte. This spokesman must be a charismatic, formerly obese man who has shed hundreds of pounds by drinking 3 skinny lattes a day (and injecting himself with heroine. But, like Subway, I am guessing they won't mention the heroine part in the commercials). Except for the charisma, the "formerly," the shedding hundreds of pounds, and the heroine, I fit the spokesman description perfectly. I have therefore made it my mission to land this role and have officially embarked on the skinny latte diet. I will keep you updated on my progress (and/or severe illness and ensuing lawsuit against Starbucks for blatant failure to warn the public not to go on a skinny latte diet).

        

Word of the Day: EXIGENT (ek'-si-juhnt), ADJECTIVE: Demanding immediate attention; urgent; pressing.

Flipping through the TV stations today, I noticed that the American Embassy in Serbia was on fire. It seems that Kosovo recently declared itself an independent nation. Enraged at this action by Kosovo, the Serbians lit the American Embassy on fire. This reaction, of course, makes perfect sense to the majority of the world.  In fact, blowing up the American Embassy is the official sport of every nation in the world except Canada and France (where it is hockey and 50 meter ice-prancing, respectively).

The incident made me wonder how I would react if one of America's states declared independence. The first thing I would do, obviously, is firebomb the Serbian Embassy. Depending on the amount of rioting in the streets, I would then effectuate my plan for exigent circumstances. Inspired by what happened with Hurricane Katrina several years ago, I created a carefully planned kit for all emergencies (floods, hurricanes, nuclear attacks, alien invasions, Hillary Clinton being elected President, etc.). The kit consists of a wheelbarrow and a list of stores to loot. While the rest of the town is foolishly evacuating or taking cover, I will be at Best Buy with an arm full of plasma TV's.

Depending on the state that breaks away from the Union, there may be no rioting or strong reaction at all. Nobody is going to shed tears over losing New Jersey. Nobody would even notice losing states like Kansas or Kentucky. In fact, pretty much everything between New York and California is expendable. Sure, if we lost this middle region there would be no more guests for Springer, NASCAR would have to declare bankruptcy, and administering DNA tests to clear up uncertain parentage would no longer be a viable industry. But I still think America would survive.

        

Word of the Day: STAUNCHLY (stawnch'-lee), ADVERB: In a firm, steadfast manner.

Last week I wrote a blog regarding the "romance tax" known as Valentines Day. Readers responded by sending me a great deal of angry e-mail (most of which had return addresses ending in "@hallmark.com"). I want to assure anyone who took exception to my attack on Valentines Day that you are completely and utterly wrong. In fact, I am beginning to see that the problem extends way beyond one day. The entire relationship process is nothing more than a disgraceful, money-making enterprise.

Let's review the life cycle of a typical relationship. First, the woman catches the man's eye and immediately begins to enjoy free drinks, free meals, Valentines presents, and other wooing-related perks.  Next, the man proposes to the woman by handing over a godzillion dollar diamond ring. Now the man can finally get in on the freebie action because the couple then throws an engagement party at which all their friends must bring gifts. A year or so later the woman's family forces her friends to fork over more free gifts at a "wedding shower." Next, the couple has a wedding, often paid for by the parents. Here, the couple asserts its complete dominance over the friends by forcing them to dance like chickens... and bring gifts. The couple then waits a while (so that nobody catches on to the nefarious scheme) and then the woman becomes pregnant. This entitles her to a "baby shower" at which her friends must bring... you guessed it... more gifts. About 9 months after strategically becoming pregnant, she gives birth. By this time the couple has almost no friends left. However, the few remaining friends are expected to buy one last gift for the birth, before declaring bankruptcy.

After all that, most couples quit their jobs, sell the thousands of gifts they have accumulated, purchase a house in the Hamptons, and live out their lives quite comfortably with the gift proceeds. But the truly greedy couples will actually get a divorce and start the entire process over with new co-conspirators. This is why I staunchly support a Constitutional Amendment to ban straight marriage.