Q: Where is Osama bin Laden not hiding?

A: Once again proving that any footage is terrifying if you play the Requiem for a Dream score under it:



Civilization is crumbling, or something. In other news, go Tribe!!!

Q: Is our children vlogging?

A: Hey kids, look! A series of unrelated videos, presented in no particular order for your immediate viewing pleasure free of charge! What a wonderful world!

• 1999 A.D. A clip from a prescient 1967 film foretelling a glorious future in which mail is sent electronically, shopping can be done from home, and parenting has been replaced by espionage. They got pretty much everything right, except in reality, the only people secretly filming your children are NSA agents.


• The Iron Man trailer. Dan Hopper at BWE thinks it looks like a retread, but I'm totally excited anyway. And not because I give a shit about Iron Man (no one does, as far as I know), but rather for one simple reason, and I'll give you a clue, it rhymes with Shmobert Shmowney Shmr.


• Cop Gone Wild, which finally addresses the Q: Who's crazier? A crazy cop, or a crazy guy who drives around with a camera installed in his car's ceiling hoping to be brutalized by a crazy cop? A: Crazy cop. After a few minutes it gets boring, but the screaming part is fun. Oh policemen, you so crazy!


• BONUS, IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: Oh Quebecois policemen, you so crazy!


• Steve Mahanahan's Child Clown Outlet. I hear good things about Adult Swim's Tim & Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!, but this is the first bit of it I've seen. If you're here because you Googled "stuff that's better when you're high," and you meant "high on meth," this will do splendidly.


• Osama bin Chomsky. Everyone acts like it's all weird that bin Laden is talking like a liberal blogger now. But bin Laden has always channeled liberal bloggers, including in the interview he gave immediately following Sept. 11th. Of course, no one really read that interview, except for the 9/11 Truth crackpot brigade, because the mainstream media was too incompetent to tell you about it. Luckily, T.A.M.S.Y. will be happy to fill you in! Later.

Q: Why is Osama bin Laden putting the lime in the coconut?

A: As I noted here, Osama bin Laden "was last known to be suffering from health issues that include a weak kidney, diabetes, osteoporosis, an enlarged heart, low blood pressure, a probable chest wound and possibly cancer." I should note I forgot to mention two important conditions: (1) typhoid, and, more poignantly, (2) hypochondria.

But if he thought his health problems were a drag before, now he's got real trouble.

• Bin Laden 'virtually impotent' [CNN Int'l]

Bet he could still get it up for Whitney Houston.

ELSEWHERE: Queer Eye for the Jihadist Guy [Sully]

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Harry Nilsson
Coconut
Nilsson Schmilsson [buy], 1971

Q: Oh British press, what won't you say?

A: Lindsay Robertson thinks she's soooo special, just because she reads past the second paragraph of the stories she blogs about. WHO HAS THE TIME!?

In my previous post, though, I did forget about my rule not to pass along the insane gibberish of the British press, without confirming the story through a trustworthy (i.e., non-British) source. I couldn't be more embarrassed if I had been proven wrong about Osama bin Laden being dead. Which I won't be.

The Smiths
Bigmouth Strikes Again
The Queen is Dead, 1986

Q: What is the only greater threat to our children than the immortality of Osama bin Laden?

A: It can't be forgotten that the greatest threat to our children is our children. THEY HAVE A LASER, PEOPLE.

Q: Which do T.A.M.S.Y. readers worry about more day-to-day?

A: The results of our first reader poll are in! Sorry for the delay; it took me some time to parse the data, as I was overwhelmed by the massive response from six of you, or five not counting me.


Clearly, you have your priorities straight, placing the Indians' pennant hopes above all other concerns combined, by a 2-1 margin.

Osama bin Laden also remains terrifying, and for good reason: We haven't heard anything new from him in years; he was last known to be suffering from health issues that include a weak kidney, diabetes, osteoporosis, an enlarged heart, low blood pressure, a probable chest wound and possibly cancer; and he's holed up in a cave and virtually unable to contact anyone. Clearly the only explanation is that he is alive and well, and a grave danger to our children.

No one chose "Hepatitis B" or "Hepatitis C," because apparently my readers are indifferent to their own sexual recklessness.

Q: Is the U.S. military closing in on Osama bin Laden?

When the War on Terror is won next week, the streets
of New York will explode into joyous sexual assault.

A: Yes! As revealed by President George W. Bush yesterday, we are just one step away from capturing and exploding Osama bin Laden: we just need to figure out where he is. Stand by!

This so-crazy-it-just-might-work new strategy in the War on Terror — codenamed Operation: Find Out Stuff and Then Do Stuff — was outlined yesterday by Bush during a press conference with his Afghani counterpart and BFF Hamid Karzai. Read 'em and weep, terrorists!:

"I'm confident, with real, actionable intelligence, we will get the job done," said Bush.

Let me unpack that a little, for those of you who aren't brilliant political minds like myself: The phrase "real actionable intelligence" is military slang, derived from the English words "real", "actionable" and "intelligence" which essentially translates to "information that is so totally not fake that we don't ignore it."

Indeed, this administration will surely be celebrated as one of the best ever, as foretold by the prophet William Kristol, as soon as Bush begins taking actions guided by real intelligence.

Meanwhile, bin Laden must be rolling in his grave! Oh, wait, did I say grave? I meant "secret underground lair." Seriously, bin Laden is totally powerful and virile and alive and terrifying and not even slightly dead. I mean, think about it: If he were dead, we would never ever find him and then we'd be terrified forever. Good thing he's so alive! We'll find him Thursday I bet.

Q: Who brings you the buzz, and also the white powder?

A: T.A.M.S.Y. does, obvs. As now confirmed by something called BuzzFeed, which notes that I am totally among the finest sources for news about psychic pets. SUCK IT, MONKEYFILTER.COM!

On a heavily, deadlier note, today is the wrong day to be making jokes about anthrax, as ABC News HQ have been rocked — ROCKED I TELL YOU — by the discovery of a suspicious white powder that will almost certainly turn out to be powdered sugar or cocaine.

WAIT OMG BREAKING: I didn't have time to finish making fun of this story before the powder was revealed to be aspirin. [via Wonkette]

But please, ABC News staff, don't let that stop you from being terrified/going home early. I'm sure that Osama bin Laden, who is totally alive and not dead, is hiding in your janitor's closet just waiting to unleash the Ice-9.

RELATED: I recently found a suspicious blue, purple and pink powder in my sock drawer, but after calling the bomb squad, National Guard, Citibank's Identity Theft hotline, and Burger King kids' club, it turned out just to be Fun Dip. Delicious Lik-M-Aid Fun Dip!

I'm eating it right now, in fact, and it's unusually tasty, now that I know it's not deadly. Probably the best Fun Dip ever. The flavors are, let's see, RazzApple Magic, Grape-Yumptious, and...wait...OH GOD NOOOOOOO!!!


That darned Qaeda!

EARLIER: Socialized anthrax will kill us all.

Q: Did you hear the one about the chief Al Qaeda propagandist killed by U.S. forces?

A: Man, Osama is as much of a jerk as a stand-up comedian as he is in his role as a terrorist mastermind. And yet I still prefer his act to Carlos Mencia's.

LA TIMES: Chief propagandist for Al Qaeda in Iraq killed, U.S. military says

Q: Is it a fine line between comedy and terrorism?

A: When in Rome, yes. When it comes to stand-up about the Pope, the line between jokes and terror is so fine as to be non-existent.

There is nothing humorous about Pope Benedict XVI's hat.

REUTERS: Vatican calls verbal attack on Pope "terrorism"

The Vatican's official newspaper accused an Italian comedian on Wednesday of "terrorism" for criticizing the Pope and warned his rhetoric could fuel a return to 1970s-style political violence.

In an unusually strongly worded editorial, L'Osservatore Romano said a presenter of a televised May Day rock concert, which is sponsored by Italy's labor unions, had launched "vile attacks" on Pope Benedict in front of an "excitable crowd." "This, too, is terrorism. It's terrorism to launch attacks on the Church," it said.

In the Pope's defense, just listen to these edgy, edgy, edgy zingers from comedian Andrea Rivera!

"The Pope says he doesn't believe in evolution. I agree, in fact the Church has never evolved," he said.

OH SNAP!

He also criticized the Church for refusing to give a Catholic funeral to a man who campaigned for euthanasia as he lay paralyzed with muscular dystrophy. He died in December after a doctor agreed to unplug his respirator.

"I can't stand the fact that the Vatican refused a funeral for Welby but that wasn't the case for Pinochet or Franco," he said.

ZING! Yep, I can barely tell the difference between those one-liners and a man strapping himself with explosives and blowing up a bus. It's practically the same thing. I'm surprised anyone made it out of there alive.

In a related story, Osama bin Laden, who is not dead, has been making headlines in all the local cave newspapers along the Afghan/Pakistani border, after unveiling his racy new terror-based stand-up routine.

Oseinfeld bin Laden: Audiences are laughing to death.

Unfortunately, it turns out he stole most of his act from Louis CK.

Q: What would Osama do?

A: Don't listen to all this gobbledygook about "bin Laden's dead, blah blah blah."¹ Osama is alive and well — and his latest plot is so nefarious, your city just might be scared stupid. I mean, assuming your city is already stupid.

• Osama Teen Hunger Force [College Humor]
  

And wow, wow, that clip is just hilarious. Is College Humor always this good? I've generally tried to avoid them, because I associate "college humor" with waking up in a puddle of my own vomit. Which I also associate with "Thursdays." [link #1 via Wonkette; #2 via Wired]

Sorry today's been quiet, aside from the very exciting legal wrangling of the previous post (will follow-up on that shortly-ish).

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¹ Just kidding, by the way; Osama = obviously dead. Not that it affects national security in any tangible way, but just for the record.

Q: Best Halloween costume ever?

A: Thomas Connolly -- an attorney from Scarborough, Maine who previously made headlines during election season 2000 for releasing details of W.'s drunk driving conviction -- was arrested on Halloween for walking around South Portland dressed in an Osama bin Laden costume.

Under normal circumstances, I would've thought this was a Republican conspiracy -- to jail an innocent man, for a non-existent infraction, as means of petty revenge. A very long-percolating, elaborate, confusing Republican conspiracy.

In the defense of the Scarborough police department, though, you have to admit that, based on Reuters' coverage of the arrest, it appears that it was indeed a very, very good costume.


Wow. Not even Robin Williams' gay brother in Mrs. Doubtfire could've pulled that off.

It also warrants mentioning that Thomas Connolly is apparently kind of an idiot.

Lt. Todd Bernard said the police department received calls about a man wearing Middle Eastern garb and a bin Laden mask and carrying fake dynamite standing along an interstate highway. When police arrived, they saw Connolly holding a gun.

"They ordered him to drop the weapon several times and he eventually complied," Bernard said...

"I didn't expect to be arrested," [Connolly] said. "Obviously I touched a post-9/11 nerve."

Um, yeah, yeah you did. You also perhaps touched a pre-9/11 nerve -- specifically, the one about dudes strapped with dynamite waving firearms at oncoming motorists. I believe it's got something to do with Americans' desire not to be murdered, which has been around since at least the 1970s.