We admit it, we owe an apology to a box of frogs...

A few days ago, we found this in an Associated Press article: "House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton shouldn't share the Democratic presidential ticket unless they really want to. "

Well, yeah, and they don't have to see "Spamalot" together unless they really want to.

After deciding that Ms. Pelosi had earned our daily "Stating The Obvious" award, we wrote that "House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is about as useful as a box of frogs."

The response was unexpected. Among the comments we received were "Why do you hate frogs?" and "I consider that a slur to the frogs."

Our first impulse was to respond as we have responded to previous complaints concerning our comments about amphibians--ignore them and delete the e-mail.

But the frogheads were right. We have not seen or read an interview with a frog in which a frog addressed the possibility of Senator Clinton and Senator Obama being running mates and said both “…I’m not one of those who thinks that's a good ticket…” and “…if Clinton and Obama think that it's a good ticket, maybe it is...”

Summary: it's a bad ticket, but maybe it's a good ticket. Thank you for the leadership, Madame Speaker. Maybe the frogs have an opinion. We'll ask them.

Since we did not specify the species of frogs in our hypothetical box, we apologize to big-eyed tree frogs, cliff chirping frogs, marsupial frogs—this could take all day, so let’s simplify it—if you are part of any of the three suborders of living Anurans--Archaeobatrachia, Mesobatrachia or Neobatrachia—oh, forget it. If you’re a frog and you’re reading this, we apologize for the pejorative reference to a box of frogs.

We will rephrase the sentence: House Speaker Pelosi is about as useful as a sack of broccoli.

Do not send us e-mail asking "why do you hate broccoli?" We will answer that in advance. Because it's broccoli.

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Raise your hands...which of you guys has a reptile in your pants?

Raise your hands...which of you guys has a reptile in your pants?

More to come...when we stop laughing...

The naked constable, a crocodile, and a guy with a Fender Stratocaster in his pants, not necessarily in that order...

“All we want are the facts.” -- Jack Webb, as Sgt. Joe Friday in Dragnet

We wish Sgt. Joe Friday and Officer Bill Gannon were investigating the crimes we are about to discuss. If any two guys could locate a man with a Fender Stratocaster guitar in his pants and a man in possession of a stolen crocodile, those two guys would be Sgt. Joe Friday and Officer Bill Gannon.

And--most importantly--Sgt. Joe Friday would be wearing trousers.

According to the Associated Press, three men—their names are unknown at this time, so we’ll call them Larry, Darryl and Darryl—entered Music Maniac in Lewiston, Maine, where Larry stuffed a Fender Stratocaster in his pants. One might assume that someone would notice a guy stuffing an electric guitar into his pants, but apparently that is not a safe assumption. We cannot help wondering how big the pants have to be to conceal a guitar, and how long it takes to stuff a guitar into a pair of pants. We'll never know. In any case, Larry, Darryl and Darryl remain at large, and we really don’t need to know that much about Larry’s pants.

We have to assume that either Darryl or Darryl created a distraction to give Larry time to stuff a guitar into his pants. So, about the crocodile…

According to Reuters, someone walked out of an aquarium in Oslo, Norway with a crocodile—specifically, a Schneider's dwarf caiman (Paleosuchus Trigonatus). To our knowledge, no one outside of Imaginary Grapefruit has suggested that the crocodile was smuggled out in a pair of pants but, at least for now, no one can prove us wrong.

If Darryl—or Darryl—needed to create a distraction so that Larry could stuff a Stratocaster into his pants, a crocodile is generally a good distraction. We don't know that a crocodile in Darryl's--or Darryl's--trousers was the distraction, but we also don't know that it wasn't.

This is where the naked constable comes in.

If you are a car thief in Balclutha, South Island, New Zealand, you probably don’t consider the possibility of being pursued by a naked constable, unless you are trying to steal the naked constable’s car. If that is the case, then the possibility of being pursued by a naked constable should be considered. (We would like to thank Reuters for not posting any photographs of the naked constable. Thank you, Reuters.) But if you are a car thief in Balclutha, South Island, New Zealand and you don’t consider the possibility of being pursued by a naked constable while you are stealing the naked constable's car, the chance of a satisfactory outcome is pretty slim.

New Zealand's least successful car thief is now aware of this. We don't care what he's done in the past, if you try to steal a car from a naked constable, your judgement is questionable.

As of this time, the police in Lewiston, Maine have not been able to find a guy with a Fender Stratocaster in his pants, and the police in Oslo, Norway have not been able to find a guy carrying a crocodile.

Clearly, it is time to bring in New Zealand's naked constable. New Zealand has both fresh water and salt water crocodiles, and also has Kiwi rock (We’re not making this up—this is from Wikipedia—“ In the 1970s Kiwi rock began to take off, and some of the more influential bands were …Hello Sailor and Split Enz, fronted by Tim Finn, and later, his brother Neil Finn who went on to form Crowded House.")

Illegal activities must have consequences. Criminals should be arrested by naked constables and forced to listen to Kiwi rock with crocodiles in their pants.

See, everything comes together.

This week’s news has been nothing if not interesting.

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The importance of proofreading

The Associated Press has just reported that toddlers can no longer marry in Arkansas.

That sentence may require an explanation.

A bill intended to require that the youngest Romeos and Juliets in Arkansas be at least 18 instead removed the age requirement entirely. Rather than requiring that Romeo and Juliet be at least 18, the bill, as written, required only that the Montagues and Capulets consent to the marriage and that Juliet must not have a buttermilk biscuit in the oven until she's an 18-year old Capulet.

Not exactly what was intended. See, proofreading matters.

But the misuse of the English language is not the interesting part of this story. The interesting part is that majorities of Arkansas’ state representatives and state senators approved the bill, the governor signed it, and no one noticed the error.

The problem has been resolved; the bill has been repealed. Arkansas’ Romeos now have to be 17 and its Juliets must have had a Sweet 16 party.

With that out of the way, we can focus on other things, like this headline we found in the on-line version of Pravda: People marry animals trying to find happiness. (We are also fond of another Pravda headline: Mutants live in the underworld of Moscow. We couldn't make this stuff up.)

Considering that the on-line version of Pravda describes UFO Digest as an “information partner,” we are not entirely convinced that people marry animals trying to find happiness. We do, however, like this sentence: "If you want happiness, you will love even a goat...however, it is unknown whether marriage with a goat is happy or not..."

And there’s this headline from BBC News which, to our knowledge, has never suggested that mutants live in the underworld of Moscow and rarely mentions goats: UAE stages camel beauty contest. Today's most obvious quip: "Say, there's a camel I'd walk a mile for..."


"Everything has its beauty but not everyone sees it." -- Confucius

This is becoming silly. We have strayed way too far from the original topic.

Incidentally, the representative who sponsored the bill that temporarily eliminated minimum age requirements for marriages in Arkansas was Will Bond.

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What the Democratic Party doesn't want you to know about Barack Obama...

The Democratic party does not want this to be discussed, but the facts cannot be disputed. Barack Obama may eventually be the party's nominee for President of the United States, but there is no way to argue that he is not one stinker of a bowler. Barack Obama couldn't hit the ten-pin if he drove a Toyota Prius down the lane.


The above photograph was taken at a bowling alley in Altoona, Pennsylvania, where the senator from Illinois rolled a 37. It is pretty hard to roll a 37 without turning 180 degrees and flinging bowling balls at the vending machines. It might be possible if one were to toss hamsters at the pins.

This is not something to be taken lightly. If Vladimir Putin had rolled a 37, the ball would be found with a new hole just after midnight and there would be no witnesses.

Is a candidate who rolls a 37 in an Altoona bowling alley the person best qualified to lead a nation?

That seemed like a reasonable question, so we set out to determine the number of nuclear weapons that the United States currently possesses and discovered that the United States possesses a hell of a lot of nuclear weapons. A missile with a nuclear warhead has a maximum range of approximately 12,000 to 13,000 kilometers. (That's what we've been told. Missiles are not our forte.)

In our opinion, if you can't hit a bowling pin 60 feet away, you need to fork over the keys to the nuclear weapons. You aren't going to hit a target 13,000 kilometers away. When you can roll a strike from a distance of 60 feet, you can have the keys to the nuclear weapons back, but only if you promise to not use them.

Think we're making too much of this? Dennis Kucinich, a Congressman from Ohio and an unlucky presidential candidate wouldn't agree--his Web site has a list of bowling alleys in his state's 10th Congressional district and links to eight other bowling Web sites including the International Bowling Museum and Hall of Fame. (We aren't kidding: http://kucinich.house.gov/Polka/bowlingalleys.htm)

In fact, the link between bowling and the White House goes back more than 60 years. A bowling alley was built in the West Wing in 1947 for Harry Truman, and there is currently a one-lane bowling alley in the basement, under the North Portico.


(Notice that Nixon is in color and the guy on the right isn't.)

After hearing that Barack Obama rolled a 37, Hillary Clinton challenged the senator from Illinois to a bowling match and, if it happens, our money is on the senator from New York.

Bowling for the White House! We like the idea.

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Eight Arms to Hold You

Coming soon to a PC near you.

Hey, it's Saturday and a blue dog is all we have...give us a break...

Imaginary Grapefruit tries to entertain and inform readers. One or the other. Sometimes both happen at the same time, but not often.

Posting a painting of a blue dog does not help us achieve either goal, but we don't care, we just like the painting, and it's all we have at the moment.



The painting is by George Rodrigue, and we stole it from Roger McGuinn's Folk Den. A link to McGuinn's Folk Den is in the left hand column. We think it's a pretty cool Web site. If you e-mail Roger, mention Imaginary Grapefruit. Don't mention the blue dog.

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The Imaginary Grapefruit list of interesting but ultimately rejected book titles

We are going to forget about politics for one day because there is no significant news. The only news is that Nancy Reagan has endorsed John McCain. Big deal. He had the nomination in his pocket without her endorsement. Now, if Nancy Reagan had endorsed Yoko Ono, that would have been interesting. Probably not as interesting as listening to Yoko Ono, but interesting enough. Didn’t happen.

Given the dearth of news today, the staff of Imaginary Grapefruit did the only thing possible under the circumstances—we plundered the cuisneoir, stole all the Dubliner, Tipperary cheddar and Stinking Bishop cheeses, the Pinot Blanc and the Syrah, and headed upstairs to the library.

As we always prefer the obscure and the obsolete, we listened to a vinyl copy of Richard Thompson Starring as Henry the Human Fly—rumored to be the worst selling record in the label’s history—ate the cheeses, drank the wine, roamed through the book shelves and came up with a list of our ten favorite rejected book titles. After finishing the Tipperary cheddar and the Pinot Blanc, we decided to call this “Our Ten Favorite Rejected Book Titles.” What clever swine we are.

So here's our list:

Our Ten Favorite Rejected Book Titles:

10. John Steinbeck: “The Various Fruits And Vegetables Of Wrath”

9. Jack Kerouac: “On The Divan”

8. Hermann Hesse: “SydAndMartha”

7. Oscar Wilde: “The Importance Of Being Lenny”

6. Dashiell Hammett: “The Maltese Budgie”

5. Truman Capote: “Breakfast with Tiffany At The Diner Around The Corner, Halfway Up The Block, The French Toast There Is Fabulous!”

4. Ernest Hemingway: “To Have And Have Not Until The Check From The Insurance Agency Arrives Then To Have Again”

3. Arthur Conan Doyle: “The Hamster Of The Baskervilles”

2. Mark Twain: “Boysenberry Finn”

1. Edgar Allan Poe: “The Fall Of The House Of Usher And The Amish Community That Rebuilt The House Of Usher In An Afternoon”

We recommend the Tipperary cheddar. The Stinking Bishop is hard to get, but we know a guy...

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John McCain's Pastor Eats Cute Kittens--Without Condiments!

We are going to have to switch gears on this one. After hearing the words of Barack Obama’s pastor, Reverend Wright, more often than we have heard Steely Dan on FM radio, and having heard endless analyses of those words by balding men wearing unflattering neckties, and having concluded that the analyses have been as enlightening as one would expect analyses by balding men wearing unflattering neckties who are staring at brick walls rather than looking through windows to be, we knew that mockery was necessary.

We decided to write a parody, the premise being that Senator John McCain’s pastor eats cute kittens on Kaiser rolls, with tangy coleslaw and puppy wedges.

We were going to suggest that if a pastor is going to eat kittens, he should do something interesting, like Braised Kitten in a Creamy Wine Sauce, Pad Thai with Kitten, or Pan Seared Kitten with Chinese Satay Spice and Asian Greens…no coleslaw. Not ever.

Then reality became dumber than anything we could think of.

We found that McCain’s candidacy was endorsed by Pastor John Hagee, who said this: “I believe that New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God and they were recipients of the judgment of God for that."

And this: "Do you know the difference between a woman with PMS and a snarling Doberman pinscher? The answer is lipstick."

A snarling Doberman pinscher with lipstick?

How do you mock stuff like that? You can’t, unless you want to achieve a level of sinfulness that will get you walloped by a hurricane hand-delivered by God.

Then we found that Hillary Clinton’s former pastor, Reverend Procanick, was convicted of crimes involving a very young girl.

At this point, we have three presidential candidates. One has a pastor who may or may not hate America, one has been endorsed by a pastor who thinks that an angry God deliberately sent a hurricane to destroy New Orleans for its sinfulness, and the third pastor is enjoying three years of contemplation and reflection courtesy of an Oneida County court.

Three pastors walk into a bar...move to the other end of the bar. Don't make eye contact.

The editor of Imaginary Grapefruit believes that this has gone too far, and will not comment further on the views or behavior of any candidate’s pastor.

Here’s the new headline:

John McCain’s Librarian Eats Cute Kittens—Without Condiments!

(The editor of Imaginary Grapefruit spends Sunday mornings listening to “Breakfast with the Beatles” and does not attend any church services, does not believe that God gift wrapped a hurricane and sent it to New Orleans, and hasn't eaten a kitten.)

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The Cow on Brentano Boulevard

Normally, you could wait until the cows came home before you found two news items about cows within ten days, one of which actually does involve cows coming to your home, presuming that you live on Brentano Boulevard. We waited, and the cows came home.

This story was reported by the CBC. It was a bit unclear—the CBC apparently doesn’t have a regular reporter on the cow beat. If you’re on the cow beat, you have to know your cows from your steers. We think we have the facts right. If we don’t, go moo.

According to the CBC cow beat reporter, a trailer carrying two cows, a steer and a bull tipped on the Queen Elizabeth Way. (We don’t normally get to combine cows and Queen Elizabeth in the same sentence. The cows have made our day, and we haven’t even mentioned the bull yet.)

Remember watching Steve McQueen on a motorcycle in “The Great Escape”? Replace Steve McQueen with a cow and you will understand why we find this funny.

The cows immediately headed west—Go West, Young Cows!—then headed for the nearest residential neighborhood.

“Knock, knock.” “Who’s there?" “Cow.” “Cow who?” “Cow about opening the bloody door, the Ontario Provincial Police are after me!”

The cow was right. The Ontario Provincial Police were in fact after the cow.

The cows made it to Brentano Boulevard in Mississauga, and that's when their luck ran out. After beeing arrested, they were photographed and taken to the hooscow. (Sorry, readers, we couldn’t resist.)

One of the cows used its moments of freedom to track down a CBC Sports producer. This doesn't happen often. "We get all kinds of animals…coyotes, foxes, deer, but never a cow," said the producer, Bridget O'Toole.

Cows are not known for their athleticism, so we are trying to imagine why cows would tip a trailer on the Queen Elizabeth Way and bust out in order to visit a CBC Sports producer. We are nothing if not inquisitive.

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