Sunday, September 28, 2008

COMIC RELIEF

On Friday's Basham and Cornell Show, the RNC Communications Director Danny Diaz hung up on me for accidentally using the word "Nazi" when I was asking him a question about the abortion issue. I had said, "I am against abortion, and I don't know any Democrats who are pro-abortion. But if you outlaw abortion, how do you enforce the law? Do you throw young mothers in jail? Do you assign a police officer to stand over each woman, each rape victim for the entire 9 months - like a Nazi state...."

I have to go back and listen to the transcipt, but he hung up on me. He said, "Okay, you used the word "Nazi" so I'm hanging up on you." Now of course I realize the word 'Nazi' is overused and verboten in political discourse, but why couldn't he have answered my question and really heard the question? I didn't use the word in the context he was thinking. I was honestly trying to get an answer to this serious dilemma. The Sarah Palin tribe wants to take away a woman's right to choose, but even if you're a Christian, I think they are wrong. There's a reason the womb is encased in the separate "body" of each individual woman. The choice must be up to her; we are each given free will and this is a decision between the woman and God, if she is religious (at least in the first trimester.) I just don't see how you enforce such a crime without dire consequences.

Check this out:
The Great Schlep!

America has become a battleground of opposing forces: the optimist, the atheist, the fundamentalist and of course, the idiot – that person inside all of us (or just that guy in the White House) who chooses to remain unconscious. - Lydia

More comedy bits below, but first this BREAKING NEWS ITEM!

Historic $700 billion bailout deal reached
Questions remain as Congress votes on legislation this week

By Mark Silva | Chicago Tribune Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON - In the short run, congressional leaders have achieved their goal of producing an agreement Sunday on a federal bailout of banks and other financial institutions holding bad mortgage debts before the world's stock markets reopened.

But in the long run, the scope and still-unknown effects of the greatest government intervention in the financial markets since the Great Depression – and the remaining underlying instability of the nation's economy -- will impose a new political challenge for the next president and Congress elected in November. The situation already has reshaped the election campaign debate.

Congressional leaders face another immediate and uncertain challenge this week – with the House expected to vote on the plan as soon as Monday, and the Senate as soon as Wednesday – in corralling enough votes to both pass it and present the controversial two-stage bailout as a bipartisan response to a national crisis.

While resistant House Republican leaders have agreed to it, many rank and file members still are balking at the unprecedented bailout of the nation's financial institutions, piling as much as $700 billion of new federal debt on the nation's taxpayers.


Bailout Deal Reached

__________________________
COMIC RELIEF by Lydia Cornell (some bits I've been working on for a new show called "Pain is Inevitable, Sex Optional

We had a neighborhood poker game going on the other night and this obnoxious loudmouth kept spitting and shoving and winning and bragging about it. He had no humility. I have to admit, he was pretty good for an six-year-old.

When my son was five, he went through a modesty phase. He wouldn’t change his clothes even in front of me. He asked me one day, “I hope the doctor didn’t see me naked when I was born!”

Why do I have to adapt my language to suit the men in my life? I have to speak in a masculine way to my sons like this: “That’s sweatshirt's a nice color. Cool.” I am forbidden to say, “That’s a pretty color..." They can’t tolerate even the most subtle feminine words or a less than macho lilt to my voice. When did it happen — when did being a woman become so uncool, so passé? Everything has to be slanted toward the male voice. It p---s me off! And my sons won’t go to a single movie with a female protagonist, while I have to suffer through raunchy, sophomoric, loud, explosive testosterone-fueled "guy" movies until I want to scream! Why are the deep thoughts of low-lifes, the only movies they make anymore?
(Photo of the boys when they were 7 and 8)

Frankly I’d be happy if he just pretended to listen to me; if he would just nod his head and say “Uh-huh, uh-huh” that would be fine – because a woman’s primary need is to be heard.

Is it wrong to dream about other men when you’re married? I had a dream the other night that I was up in a mountain cabin having cocktails with Errol Flynn when suddenly the door blew open and Sean Connery came riding in on a yak. I think it was a yak, but you know how in dreams it could have been a mule or an elk? I had a baby on my lap and I kept thinking, “he’s a cute baby, but I wish he’d lose that phony Italian accent. I looked at his face and it was Johnny Depp, trying to sell me a hot dog. Is this a sexual dream? I can’t figure it out.

I went to a kosher butcher whose cuts of meat were so symmetrical it made me wonder if he cuts hair too. “Give me a pound of briscuit and take a couple of inches off the top.” It’s obvious that Jane Wyman and Mo of the Three Stooges got their hair cut at the butcher.

My husband is still angry that we didn’t use his dog as the ring-bearer in our wedding. And now that Sammi has died, he is taking it out on me.

Maybe my husband’s good for me; he dulls my mind. Maybe the blankness, the lack of engaged conversation is healthy. We speak to each other in one-syllables. I do wish he’d take that class in pretending to listen.

Why aren’t cars made out of fur? There’d be fewer fatal car crashes.

I wish I could figure out a way to make money out of just piddling around the house.

I decided not to surround myself with critical people. Now I have no friends.

I do have to badger my husband into mental health. I’m always chasing him around the house with a psychology book and he’s always running away and hiding when I want to talk. And my kids make me play Harry Potter – I have to wear a long black robe and ride a broomstick around the house. To get out of it, I hide from them in the closet. One time I ducked into the closet and found my husband in there hiding from me!

Now I realize I am deliberately not letting myself be more evolved in this relationship because there’s too much comedy material I’m getting out of it.

My husband is a Republican who thinks all Democrats are vegetarians, but that’s perfect because I think you’re supposed to be married to the person who annoys you the most! That’s why the Arabs and Israelis are next door to each other, they just don’t get it yet. The most spiritual growth happens with your enemies. So I’m in a really good position. Although I have never finished a sentence in this marriage. I am always being interrupted!

NOW THIS IS REALLY FUNNY...

FLIGHT OF THE CONCHORDS