Rhinocrisy

Recently it has come to my attention that other blegs are in the habit of posting light, entertaining things on Friday afternoons, to, I assume, massage the kinks of stress out of your shoulders in time for the weekend. (Actually, this didn’t really come to my attention RECENTLY, per se, so much as A LONG TIME AGO, but I thought that was a nice way to start this paragraph. Sometimes writing style must take precedence over content and factual accuracy.) Bob Harris, for example, pioneered “pudublogging”, wherein he posts pictures of absurdly cute ungulates. Don’t look, unless you’re prepared to make the “Awwww” noise. Other bloggers whom I otherwise respect are in the habit of posting the first ten songs on their iPod playlists, as if this could possibly interest anyone. Maybe I say this because I am bitter about being musically illiterate and recognize, on average, 0.03% of the songs/artists posted.

Anyway, I can’t participate in this farce, because it’s late, and I’m still not ready to deliver the data for my time-sensitive assignment to my Canadian taskmasters. Commensurate with my bitterness, please savor this picture of a scorpion.

Good news: President Bush says he reads the paper. More good news: He “questions” rules that will make the U.S. borders with Mexico and Canada even more ridiculous human-rights-and-sanity-free-zones.

“When I first read that in the newspaper about the need to have passports, particularly the day crossings that take place, about a million for instance in the state of Texas, I said, ‘What’s going on here?’ ” Bush said when asked about the new rules at an American Society of Newspaper Editors convention. “I thought there was a better way to expedite the legal flow of traffic and people.”

Bad news: Neither he nor anyone else outside the world of blogs and tech-geek websites seems to care that mandatory new passport rules are to go into effect in a couple months that will make anyone with a passport into a sitting duck for identity thieves, terrorists, and surveillance geeks. Go figure: American with passports didn’t vote for the guy. At least some commie, god-hating homo-lovers have decided to defend basic human dignity along with travelers’ physical safety.

In case you still want to know which came first, I hope this satisfies your curiosity. Now, riddlers have two options. Either ask a more specific but totally annoying question, like, “Which came first, the chicken or the chicken-egg?” or come up with a new line of questioning altogether. Suggestions are welcome.