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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Happy Birthday, War!

Happy birthday, war!

The Iraq war is five years old today. We were going to buy it a pony but try gift wrapping a pony and you’ll see why we didn’t buy the war a pony. We got the war a gift certificate instead. It can choose its own pony.

None of the editors of Imaginary Grapefruit were invited to the birthday party, probably because we didn’t send the pony. We doubt that Lawrence Lindsey was invited either, and we doubt that he bought the war a pony for its birthday.

In 2002, Lawrence Lindsey, then the President’s chief economic advisor, estimated that the cost of the war could be in the range of $100 to $200 billion and was shoved out the door in less time than it took Smarty Jones to win the 2004 Preakness Stakes.

And rightly so, he was way off. According to recent estimates, the United States has ponied up about $500 billion so far. Lindsey deserved to be sent back to his stall.

Of course, we could point out that Mitchell E. Daniels Jr., director of the Office of Management and Budget, predicted that the cost of the war would be in the range of $50 billion to $60 billion. But—we’re quoting the New York Times—“Mr. Daniels cautioned…that it was impossible to know what any military campaign against Iraq would ultimately cost.”

In other words, “I’m wearing a blindfold and swinging a broomstick at a piñata. If I hit it, it’s sheer luck.”

Or, as Yogi Berra supposedly said, "it's tough to make predictions, especially about the future." Mr. Berra, send your resume to the Office of Management and Budget.

The President of the United States, speaking this morning at the Pentagon, said that “war critics can no longer credibly argue that we are losing in Iraq, so now they argue the war costs too much…"

And he’s right! Ignore the fact that no weapons of mass destruction were found, ignore the thousands of deaths and grievous bodily injuries among military personnel and civilians, ignore the fact that the expense is already ten times the amount initially estimated by director of the Office of Management and Budget and is still growing, and you have to conclude that it has been a brilliant success, and well worth the cost.

Mission accomplished!

Happy birthday, war, and we’re sorry about the pony. It is really hard to gift wrap a pony, but we tried.

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Eliot Spitzer Night at Luther Williams Field--really, we're not making this up...

We would love to hear what Yogi Berra would say about this. He did once say that “…only in America could a thing like this happen…” and that seems about right.

The Macon Music, a baseball team in the South Coast League, announced a few days ago that its game against the Aiken Foxhounds would be played on Eliot Spitzer Night and—heck, we’ll just quote the team’s Web site:

1. The Music have extended an invitation for former New York Governor Spitzer to be on hand and throw out the first pitch;
2. The team will give away a Washington, DC vacation including a one night stay at the Mayflower Hotel;
3. Client #9 (or fan #9) will receive a free Music prize pack;
4. Any fan with the name Eliot, Spitzer, or “Kristen” along with any fan from New York will receive $1 off admission;
5. The Music will play Frank Sinatra music throughout the evening in honor of New York;
6. Wire Taps will be placed throughout the ballpark this evening;
7. ATMs will be available for cash withdrawals not to exceed $5,000 per hour;
8. Any fan who has resigned their position will be given $1 off admission;
9. The 871 fan will receive a gift certificate for the Macon Music Team store.

Is there a better way to get Dad to take the kids to the ballpark than to dedicate a night to a philandering disgraced politician who was forced to resign after his unseemly behavior was disclosed? Of course not. Plus, if the kids are named Eliot and Kristen, that’s two bucks off admission.

The team’s plan to have an Eliot Spitzer Night has probably attracted more attention than anything else that has ever happened in the South Coast League.

Four days after announcing that Friday, June 13 would be Eliot Spitzer Night, the team began an online poll to let fans decide whether Eliot Spitzer Night should be cancelled.

The voting, as of this minute, is evenly split. Half of the team's fans are in favor of having a Philandering Disgraced Politician Forced To Resign After His Unseemly Behavior Was Disclosed night. Bring the kids.

Will Eliot Spitzer Night at Luther Williams Field happen? We don’t know, because as Yogi Berra said “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.” (That quotation is attributed to Yogi. We don’t know if he actually said it—some quotations are incorrectly attributed to Yogi and we imagine that Yogi might say that “if I said it, I didn’t say it”—but we like it anyway.)

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There are some things you don't imagine yourself writing--"Naked Guy on a Forklift" is one example...

This is true--it was reported by the Associated Press and we saw it in the Philadelphia Inquirer: a naked guy in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, went totally Keith Moon at the Willow Valley Resort, drove a forklift through a wall, then crossed the street to Darrenkamp's Market, where he overturned a 300-pound pizza oven. (The oven weighed 300 pounds, not the pizza.)

The naked guy caused some other damage but, from our perspective, once you've combined a naked guy, a forklift and a pizza oven in one story, you've hit the trifecta.

What else is new today? Well, the governor of New York resigned, a major Wall Street investment bank crashed and burned in less time than it takes for a fly to land on a banana, and a naked guy drove a forklift.

When Bob Woodward was told that burglars had busted into the office of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate, he didn't think that the story would amount to much.

Someone at the Associated Press probably said "oh bugger me, not another naked pizza oven flipping guy on a forklift story..."

But Woodward was wrong and, similarly, it is possible that someone at the Associated Press didn't immediately see the larger picture.

The two Democratic presidential candidates are running neck and neck, both need Pennsylvania's delegates like fish need water, and both will be in the state tomorrow. Can it really be a coincidence that a guy chooses this particular time to get naked, drive a forklift through a wall and flip a pizza oven in a state critical to both candidates? We don't think so.

This is exactly what Nixon's henchmen did to Ed Muskie in 1972. Anyone else notice that the likely Republican candidate, John McCain, went to Iraq just before the naked guy drove a forklift through a wall and flipped a pizza oven in a mainly Democratic state? Another coincidence? We don't think so.

Clearly, the strategy of the Republican party is to discredit its opponents by implying an association between the Democratic party and naked guys on forklifts.

Forkliftgate!

Welcome to the new Imaginary Grapefruit. We put the pieces together for you, because no one else will.

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All we are saying is, give puppets a chance

Yesterday, a report by KOCO-TV in Oklahoma City said that “a bomb was inadvertently dropped from a military jet onto the Canyon Creek Apartments in Tulsa on Thursday…military officials are trying to figure out how the pilot could have dropped the training weapon.”

The residents of the apartment were out at the time, but their aloe plants are missing and their cat will be in therapy for a long time.

Last year, the Army Times reported that nuclear missiles were inadvertently loaded onto a B52 bomber that flew from North Dakota to Louisiana. An Air Force spokesman called it “an "isolated incident,”adding that "the Air Force takes its mission to safeguard weapons seriously.”

He didn’t use the words “don’t be concerned that we mishandled nuclear missiles and flew them across the country, possibly over your apartment building.”

And a few days ago, we reported that the United States had dropped a bomb on three cows in Iraq. That one, we understand. The cows were hiding WMPs—weapons of milk production.

The editors of Imaginary Grapefruit have reached a conclusion: bombs and nuclear missiles are dangerous!

We propose using lawn darts instead...oops, we forgot that lawn darts have been banned in the United States since 1988, when they were deemed to be too dangerous.

So, how about puppets? Indonesian wayang puppets, Chinese stick puppets, whatever. Puppets are harmless. They don’t fall on buildings, kill cows or hurt anyone except, occasionally, other puppets. We like puppets.

All we are saying is, give puppets a chance.

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All the news, before it happens...

We do not like to boast, but we have to point out that we have just hammered two nails squarely on their steel heads.

First, we predicted that the emperor of the Empire State was going to drop faster than a pig tossed from a Bell 47B helicopter.

We have no idea why the fall of the emperor of the Empire State made us think of pigs falling from a Bell 47B.

There is an explanation for the Bell 47B, though. According to the American Helicopter Museum: "On March 8, 1946 the Bell 47B became the first commercially certified helicopter in the United States."

So, if you're going to toss pigs from a helicopter, the Bell 47B is a good choice. That model is historically significant.

The plummeting pigs part, we can’t explain. It was the first thing we thought of.

We do not approve of flinging pigs from helicopters. But the point is that we predicted that the emperor of the Empire State would fall faster than a pig tossed from a Bell 47B helicopter it before it happened, and we were right.

Second, we predicted that the morning news would describe the emperor's--let's use a polite term--consort--in such detail that we would know what's in her CD player.

Bingo. This morning's news reported that she prefers Etta James, Aretha Franklin and Frank Sinatra. Two out of two.

That's why Imaginary Grapefruit is here, to report the news before it happens. Read it here first.

We do, however, owe an apology to the emperor of the Empire State's consort. We said he overpaid, but a consort that likes Etta James and Aretha Franklin is probably worth $4,600. One suggestion for the emperor, though, next time, knock a few bucks off if you have to listen to Frank Sinatra.

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Love Potion, Client 9?

Anyone else notice that the governor of New York—let’s call him the emperor—ran the Empire State and was caught indulging at the Emperors Club? It is possible—we admit that we have no confirmation that this is true, largely because we made it up, but it is possible—that the emperor used Amtrak’s Empire service, the train that runs from Albany to Penn Station, on his way from the Empire State to the Emperors Club. How’s that for symmetry?

William Shakespeare would be in dog heaven, although as far as I know, there is no character in any of Shakespeare’s plays named Kristen. Had Shakespeare written a play called “Romeo and Kristen,” it would have been a dog’s breakfast. Shakespeare had more sense than his dog, which is why he never used Amtrak’s Empire service and never hired a girl named Kristen.

We, the staff of Imaginary Grapefruit, do not want to know anything more about the emperor or Kristen. We now know the color of Kristen’s hair, her weight and what’s in her CD player, and we don’t care.

There are better things to think about than where the emperor of the Empire State hangs his trousers, or how much he spends to hang them there. He can afford a place to hang his trousers and where the trousers hang is not our concern. There are other things to think about. Spring training has started, for heaven’s sake.

The total population of the world is 6,656,215,567—whoops, 568—congratulations, someone—and if this morning’s news provides any guidance, half are reporters and the other half have been asked by the first half for an opinion of the emperor.

Enough, already!

There is no need to interview at least one person from every geographic location in the world. Eliminate everyone from the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, for example, and that's 480,222 fewer people for Matt Lauer to interview on The Today Show right there, leaving more time for The Today Show to demonstrate interesting things to do with waffles. At this point, we’d rather make banana nut buttermilk waffles than hear another word about the Emperors Club.

There is no question about it; the emperor of the Empire State is a mosquito in a bug zapper. According to the Associated Press: “…70 percent of New Yorkers think the emperor should resign, while 66 percent believe he should be impeached and removed from office if he doesn't.”

We have no idea, of course, what Kristen was wearing at the hotel, but the label on at least one undergarment must have said “Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate"--"Abandon all hope, ye who enter here."

Memo to the emperor: always read the labels. Use Woolite. And always pay your girls in cash.

We regret having to say this, but there is no way to put it gently: the Spitz has hit the fan.

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Cow Lateral Damage

Imaginary Grapefruit is cow-friendly. If we had more space, we'd have cows in here right now. They could do some typing, work in the mail room, graze--we wouldn't care. We just like cows. We do not approve of firing missiles at cows. But when the morning news reports that the United States fired a missile at cows, it is just plain funny. It is regrettable, of course, and we will send our condolences to the families of the cows as soon as we stop laughing at the absurdity.

This is an actual news item--honestly, we have not changed a word: "A US missile strike...aimed at a man described by the Pentagon as 'a known al-Qa'ida terrorist' succeeded only in...killing three cows."

A White House press release said "We regret the cow lateral damage, but we have achieved our goal of depriving international dairyists of milk and other dairy products that we cannot mention at this time for national security reasons. These were not just cows, they were bovine extremists. America needs to be united in the war against dairyists."

Yeah, we admit that we made up that last part. We have stopped laughing and we apologize, for our country, to the families of the cows for...oh heck, we're laughing again. We have just imagined Slim Pickens riding the missile in "Dr. Strangecow."

For the cows reading this post, for your safety, if you are a cow, keep moving. America knows where you moo.

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