It's an outrage.

Go get your stickiness back right now

2007-07-18T14:09:00.000-07:00

“You have to look at why sex was created,” Eric Love, the director of the East Texas Abstinence Program, which runs Virginity Rules, said one day, the sounds of Christian contemporary music humming faintly in his Longview office. “Sex was designed to bond two people together.”

To make the point, Mr. Love grabbed a tape dispenser and snapped off two fresh pieces. He slapped them to his filing cabinet and the floor; they trapped dirt, lint, a small metal bolt. “Now when it comes time for them to get married, the marriage pulls apart so easily,” he said, trying to unite the grimy strips. “Why? Because they gave the stickiness away.”

They gave the stickiness away. Dear God, where did it go? It's an outrage.

I'm thinking the citizens of Paris are beyond humiliation at this point

2007-06-08T08:37:00.000-07:00

You know the world's soul is dying when the attorney general of the most populated state in the union weighs in on a 45-day jail sentence (or lack thereof) for driving with a suspended license:

California Attorney General Jerry Brown criticized the Sheriff's Department for letting [Paris] Hilton out of jail, saying he believed she should serve out her sentence. "It does hold up the system to ridicule when the powerful and the famous get special treatment," Brown told The Associated Press in an interview before testifying at a congressional hearing in Washington, D.C. "I'm sure there's a lot of people who've seen their family members go to jail and have various ailments, physical and psychological, that didn't get them released," he said. "I'd say it's time for a course correction."

I'd say it's time that he stop wasting his breath and California's tax dollars, and just correct whatever course he's referencing. Something tells me he's not going to do any of those things. It's an outrage.

And?

2007-05-26T22:59:00.000-07:00

Lincoln is Katie's lover, but I don't care. Cell turnover was wasted on figuring this out.

You're kidding, right? Did he also have a cramp in his leg during the Gettysburg Address? If we don't know yet, let's sick some university professors on the case immediately. They clearly need a heftier workload.

It's an outrage.

Of hats and exclamation points

2007-05-08T23:38:00.000-07:00

It's an outrage that I'm not outraged enough. This calls for an exclamation point.

!

For more than a moment the other day, the top story on Google News was this little diddy from The New York Times: "Bush And Queen Celebrate Common Values." Well, thank goodness. I thought the world was going to hell in a hand basket.

The Queen. It was truly good film making, and now it's bad reality television. The worst kind of reality television because there isn't even an objective or the promise of millions of dollars. There's just a stodgy old woman, who may have some political sway in her kingdom, but who essentially does nothing now but wear big hats and coordinated suit dresses. It's a good thing the Kentucky Derby was scheduled during her trip, or she would've looked like she was on her way to a costume party for the entirety of her American holiday.

Every shot of her at every stop on her American tour has made it quite clear why there was a revolution. She can't even laugh at the always-expected slip of George W. Bush's tongue, who almost accidentally incorrectly dated her last visit to the country her nation fought so hard to keep by 200 years. Americans lust after Queen Elizabeth because she is seemingly perfect — there is not much she can do wrong. There is simply a tiara, sparkly pomp and circumstance, and apparently, shared values.

Those shared values include the laziness of media companies everywhere, who follow Queen Elizabeth's every footstep and lend 10 minutes to her on the nightly news, but just 10 seconds to the 45 people killed in the latest Iraqi car-bombing.

It's nice to have nice news. But when our values mean that we celebrate to death one woman's mere existence for reasons that no one can really explain, and ignore the untimely, unjust and violent deaths of countless others, it's an outrage.

The Supremes vs. My Body

2007-04-23T21:06:00.000-07:00

I'm not going to shut up about the U.S. Supreme Court's recent decision on "partial-birth abortion." And I shouldn't.

"Partial-birth abortion" is a term that was created by abortion foes. It's not a medical term and it's not a specific description of one abortion procedure. In fact, there's plenty of argument over what exactly constitutes a "partial-birth abortion," and many doctors believe the term could include all second-trimester abortions.

If you read the court's opinion you'll notice extensive, graphic descriptions of abortion procedures. The court, conveniently, does very little in the way of describing the circumstances in which those procedures are used. If you don't know why a woman might want a second-trimester abortion you ought to read this. It describes just a few instances when a second-trimester abortion is necessary, and there are others.

The major, glaring, cruel error of the Supreme Court's Gonzales vs. Carhart decision is that there's no exception for an abortion to protect the health of the mother. The high court's majority contends that there's never any such circumstance. Doctors, particularly, the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, disagree:

"Decisions involving pregnancy termination are among the most serious and personal that a woman will make in her life. As the medical specialists in women's reproductive health, we will continue to fight attempts to criminalize legitimate medical procedures."

The idea that I — or you, or your sister, your daughter, your friend — would be forced to forgo medical treatment for a sudden illness or carry a fetus conceived during a rape to term. It's enough to stand up and shout.

Here's a brilliant bit from Mahablog via Digby:

"The anti-abortion rights position is based on an assumption that women aren’t real people — especially women who get abortions. Oh, they’re human in a scientific sense, but they aren’t people. They are archetypes who live in the heads of the anti-abortion righters — Careless Woman, Selfish Woman, Woman in a Vacuum. The same people who imagine embryos can think and feel emotions — and therefore deserve protection — must believe a pregnant woman is just a major appliance.
There are copious anecdotes from abortion providers who say that often the same people protesting outside the clinic one week are patients (or parents of patients) the next week. These people assume that their situations are unique and should be the one exception. They often want the abortion staff to know they aren’t like those other women who get abortions. This inspired the bitter joke that the legitimate reasons for abortion are 'rape, incest, and me.' Such people recognize their own humanity (or their daughter’s), but those other women who get abortions are just archetypes who don’t deserve respect or consideration.

I’ve long believed that whether one is pro-choice or anti-choice does not depend on whether one thinks embryos are human beings. It depends on whether one recognizes that women are human beings. Not archetypes, but real, individual human beings. Including women who get abortions.

My body, my choice, my outrage. My choice, your choice, our reproductive freedom dashed away bit by bit. It's an outrage.

A scene of outrage from this morning

2007-04-13T07:58:00.000-07:00

RCN Internet tech guy: I have no idea why this isn't working.
Me: Well, what are we going to do about that?
RCN Internet tech guy: You need to get a computer person.
Me: Aren't you a computer person?
RCN Internet tech guy:

And scene.

So, umm, anyone know a computer person? RCN doesn't seem to have any.

I want a baby elephant

2007-04-11T21:06:00.000-07:00

And I can't have one. It's an outrage.

Yup.

2007-04-11T07:58:00.000-07:00

I got another "women like to see penis" hit today. I just wanted you to know that.

I kid you not

2007-04-09T20:38:00.000-07:00

President George W. Bush seems to be confused. In that speech he gave telling Congress he will not sign that Iraq bill for several reasons, not the least of which is because of all the pig parts stuffed in it, he highlighted one particular item. It happens to be a pet peeve of mine. You might have heard.

"Here's the bottom line: The House and Senate bills have too much pork," [Bush] said. He got a laugh at lawmakers' expense when he said $3.5 million was included "for visitors to tour the Capitol and see for themselves how Congress works."

Who could disagree with that? Certainly not me. It's interesting, though. He didn't seem to mind signing all the bills that have already appropriated more than $550 million for the center. It turns out it costs more than $3.5 million for visitors to see how Congress works.

But in that recent speech, according to the White House's official transcript, he actually did say, "There's $3.5 million for visitors to tour the Capitol and see for themselves how Congress works. (Laughter.) I'm not kidding you."

Oh, and, it seems that workers building this little, $3.5 million project (at least that's what Bush thinks) were exposed to life-threatening asbestos, despite the Architect of the Capitol's insistence that the tunnels they were working in were safe.

It's an outrage. I'm not kidding you.

Google has a map czar and he is a bad liar

2007-04-01T11:57:00.001-07:00

Google Maps has apparently replaced new satellite imagery of New Orleans' wasted shoreline and city with older and prettier ones, apparently for nostalgia's sake, since Google Map Czar John Hank's only explanation to a Congressional committee last week was that "a combination of factors including imagery date, resolution and clarity" are the standards Google uses to decide which pictures to display.

The newer images of the city's coastline were not up to date? The more advanced satellite technology did not provide a clearer image of the wreckage Hurricane Katrina left behind and continues to be left behind by the myriad of agencies that are supposed to be hauling it away?

I think those people at Google are spending too much time on the climbing wall, and not enough time trying to make up logical lies for things like this. Wonkette agrees that it's an outrage.

U.S. SuPeeps Court in the case of Bush v. Gore

2007-03-30T22:58:00.000-07:00

It's an outrage that this clever and beautiful diorama has not received any recognition whatsoever from The Washington Post's Peeps diorama contest. It must be run by the same professionals who screw up Date Lab every week. That's all I have to say about that.

There are no words

2007-03-29T18:15:00.000-07:00

I've been trying all day, but I've still got nothing. It's just too terrifying.

In honor of my CD player

2007-03-23T21:26:00.000-07:00

Tonight, I was walking in the direction of my apartment building listening to my favorite song of all time when out of nowhere came a group of drunk college kids. One blond frat boy lunged toward me, pointed at my 2002 Sony G Protection CD player, Model No. D-SJ301 (Maybe. It's kind of wearing off) and shouted, "You need to get an iPod!," in a tone that suggested my precious CD player was greatly offending him.

He might as well have said, "You need to cut your right arm off!"

I left this country on a jet plane about two days before the iPod revolution. That's a guestimation. So I bought a nearly $100 CD player to bring with me to a place I knew nothing about. My father rolled his eyes, sure that it would break during the first week. I knew then that the CD player was going to become my most precious material possession, and it did. The CD player has been with me everywhere I've gone since then.

It survived dust storms wrapped in a handkerchief and a plastic bag. It kept me going on what had to be more than 100, 12-mile bike rides between my village and the closest town. It kept me company on hours-, and sometimes, days-long rides on ancient European tour buses or stripped down delivery vans retrofitted with benches and no doors. It survived months of 130-degree afternoons, even as the heat gave new meaning to CD burning. It ran three miles strapped to my arm every day. I dropped it on rocks more than once and it burst open, its two AA batteries spilling out. It has actually been to Timbuktu and back. It's also been to Thailand, Laos, Burma, Senegal, The Gambia, Paris, Madrid, and Cambodia, where it helped me keep my lunch down on a tortuously long and bumpy dirt road. I'll dare to say that it loved the Kuwait City airport as much as I did. When someone jacked my car stereo (the one thing in it that worked well), that CD player and some mini-speakers became my stereo.

And it's still kicking. Perhaps I'm being entirely too sentimental, but how can I so easily give up on something that never gave up on me? The drunk, blond frat boy assumed my CD player is just a nearly obsolete electronic device. I think we should make drunk, blond frat boys obsolete. They are an outrage.

Kill me now.

2007-03-17T23:23:00.000-07:00

I guess I should be checking on the Vows videos more often. This one truly, truly could cause vomiting and is truly, truly an outrage. You'll see why immediately.

Plus, they let them in even though their eyebrows clearly are not on the same level.

Sure it's grand — a grand waste of $600 million

2007-03-11T19:21:00.000-07:00

The Capitol Visitor Center is something that I love to hate, but they are making it way too easy for me these days (see above).

The Washington Post recently reported that the project's previous price of around $550 million rose by $50 million in just a few months. At the former number, the cost of the project would've already been double what it was supposed to be when Congress first endorsed the project. Lovers of the stone and glass underground structure have called it "grand" and "majestic." I can't see it since there's still a big wall around it, but I trust that those observations are true. After all, $600 million can buy a lot of Tennessee marble and massive glass skylights.

Consider this: We often see members of Congress throwing up their hands in frustration about balancing budgets and where to find funding for, say, health care and pensions for veterans (sorry, it's TimesSelect) of a war we are still losing. I think $600 million could put at least a minor dent in that problem. Even lawmakers who are against what one called a "boondoggle" of a project seem to do nothing more than shake their heads in disgust. Instead, Congress continues to appropriate money for additions to the visitor center, much of which the visitors will never see.

I suppose they will see the set of the new TV studio for members of Congress, and I'm sure they'll be grateful that their representative doesn't look so Richard-Nixon-versus-John-F.-Kennedy thanks to the built-in makeup room.

I wonder if they already have makeup artists on staff. If not, surely they'll need some now. It's an outrage.

Shut up about Big Brother

2007-03-09T21:46:00.000-08:00

My answer to "Reader's" original comment, whose name is actually Katie, is that you have no idea whether my British counterpart is tracking your visits. Just because he or she doesn't have a Site Meter symbol up (see below and right) doesn't mean he or she doesn't have one, or one similar to it. Almost every Web site in the world has a tracker on it. I keep mine so I can have fodder for posts like this. Who wouldn't want to know that their site is the only one in the whole world that comes up when someone Googles "women like to see penis pictures" ? That's an accomplishment if I ever saw one. And that I rank at all on a number of combinations of "240sx Nissan pop-up lights stuck," and often near the top. Or second for "doritos suck." Really, can you blame me?

I'm not even smart enough to figure out all the things that Site Meter could tell me. So cut it off with all the Big Brother melodrama. And stop being so insecure about who knows what sites you visit when. Believe me, bigger brothers than me know a lot more about you than I do. And they care a lot more, since I couldn't care less. You should really be using your time to write e-mails to all those data-mining companies.

By the way, I also rank first for — you guessed it — it's an outrage.

P.S. My British counterpart's site doesn't appear to have been updated since 2003. I think you're going to run out of relevant outrages pretty fast, if you can stand to look at the mess of a site for more than 30 seconds.

P.P.S. Today, my Site Meter told me that I'm fourth for "yale graduate douchebag" and third for "big boobs german tennis player." I can't explain how much that warms my heart.

Oh no he didn't

2007-03-03T00:21:00.000-08:00

CNN's Glenn Beck: I don't think you have to be famous. I think you just work in the average, you know, in the average environment in America now, somebody would get a picture of you, and then it would be posted all around, and you — it'll happen in your office.

US Weekly chick: Yeah, possibly.

Beck: You don't think so?

Chick: Well, it depends. You know, it depends —

Beck: Dina, I've got some time and a camera. Why don't you stop by? No? OK.

He's an outrage. No? OK.

God help us

2007-02-22T21:44:00.000-08:00

We have to collectively mourn a day when hell freezes over, and Kevin Federline appears to be more responsible than another human being. And he wears socks with flip-flops. It's an outrage.

Now I'm a NOW girl

2007-02-22T18:47:00.000-08:00

Did you know that last year's women's Wimbledon champion made about $60,000 less in prize money than the dude who won the men's championship? And that just today, Feb. 22, 2007 (see above for verification), the English snobs who run the most prestigous tennis tournament in the world decided to give this year's female champion as much as the man. Just today, in a country that beat us to electing a woman to the highest office in the land by more than 25 years so far. I can't believe Venus and Serena didn't lead a boycott years ago.

There appear to be logical reasons for the difference — the main claim is that men play for the best of five sets and women only three. But women aren't incapable of playing five rounds. The English snobs simply don't allow it. Players with breasts, such as Venus and Serena, have raked in tons of cash, further popularized the sport and upped the tournament's television ratings. Plus, none of them have gone all Britney and shaved their heads. Anyone who thinks Roger Federer is sexier than Maria Sharapova should raise their hand right now.

And lest there be any confusion over whether the discrepancy was sexist until today, let us here from Tommy Haas, a German player who is currently ranked ninth in the world and said girl tennis players are great and all, but:

"I think the depth of men’s tennis is much tougher than the women’s," he told The New York Times.

Well, Haas, I think you're an outrage. Feel free to send him hate mail.

This might be too painful to watch

2007-02-18T22:09:00.000-08:00

A purported 1,000 University of North Carolina students showed up to witness a guy break up with his girlfriend on Valentine's Day. He corralled them through an events page listing on Facebook.com that read:

"She thinks I am going to sing a song to her in the pit to be romantic, but I'm going to tell her I slept with her roommate. There will be plenty of other information that gets revealed as well. We haven't been dating very long, but we have been friends for years. ... If you haven't ever seen a bad public breakup before ... I cannot tell you what you are missing. You don't want to watch, but you can't look away. It's going to be hateful.

Also, if you know my gf, you would know why she can't see this, and I will kill you if you ruin this!"... (more)

It's an outrage that these people are considered members of my generation. But the girls' a capella performance of "Not Ready To Make Nice" wasn't bad.

Stop bitching, start a ketchup revolution

2007-02-15T08:49:00.000-08:00

It's possible this is a little too persnickety even for me, but why do tall, glass ketchup bottles still dominate the restaurant market? Over the years, they have proven to be pretty terrible at dispensing ketchup, and many alternate containers have been invented to solve that problem. Even if restaurants think it's classless to serve ketchup in plastic squeeze bottles, there are stout glass bottles with wide mouths that save patrons at least 30 seconds and additionally save the sides of their hands since they don't need to karate chop the 57 to get the sacred Heinz recipe out of the bottle.

I say this should be the beginning of a rebellion, starting with
tall, glass ketchup bottles. They are an outrage. Who's with me?

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

2007-02-08T14:20:00.000-08:00

I thought about being outraged over the media coverage and reaction to Anna Nicole Smith's death, now only hours old. But then I thought it would sound like the same, old, tired thing. It probably would have gone something like this:

"Anna Nicole Smith, one of the many new celebrities famous for having no talent, gold digging and being an absolutely crazy blonde with big boobs, died today and instantly became the lead story on the Web sites of every major news outlet around the world. CBS Radio was standing by for updates, the delivery man in the parking lot shook his head in disbelief and the coffee drinkers at Starbucks chattered, "Anna Nicole Smith. Wow, can you believe it?" On all other days, you would never find those people talking about the same exact thing at the same exact time, but there they were.

I never hear radio broadcasters standing by for more news on the genocide in the Sudan, and, thanks to Anna, even fewer people will find out that a bunch of physicists want to build a 20-mile-long machine so they can create a new universe here on Earth. Sort of. A new universe for the low, low price of $6.7 billion doesn't sound so bad right now. I'll take it. It's an outrage."

And blah, blah, blah. Blah.

Doritos and the FCC suck

2007-02-05T20:55:00.000-08:00

This commercial was one of the five winners in a Super Bowl commercial contest. A few Super Bowls ago, Janet Jackson's bare breast was a national scandal. Now, it's fine to insinuate that a checkout lady has just given a blow job to a customer as long as her cleavage stays tucked in her uniform.

It's the kind of thing that makes me want to become a NOW girl. It's an outrage.

'Hair today, gone tomorrow'

2007-02-02T22:50:00.000-08:00

I might not get to marry the one on the left. That's an outrage.

His name was Barbaro. He was a horse, of course.

2007-02-01T22:21:00.000-08:00

And, just in case you don't get it, there are about 1,000 idiotic, cliche-infested writers who will be happy to tell you why "we" mourn Barbaro's passing. Exhibit A is this New York Times op-ed moron:

He never talked about himself in the third person.

Was his name really Mister Ed? How could they have kept this from us?

His only tattoo was discreetly hidden.

Yes. There are all those horses with less moral courage who have ended too many drunken nights at the tattoo parlor.

He did no commercials for cellphone plans, credit cards, fast food chains or time shares.

Which shows incredible self restraint. Any talking horse would want to vouch for T-Mobile. Or at least be in the same room as Catherine Zeta-Jones.

He never dated Paris Hilton.

On this one, I think we have to give Paris the benefit of the doubt, and assume it was she who never dated Barbaro, despite his impassioned pursuit of her.

He never fathered multiple offspring out of wedlock. Alas.

Alas, that's because only the good die young and unmarried. Duh.

You know what else Barbaro never did? He never made up a national soap opera so editorial writers and pundits could wax poetic about absolutely nothing and get paid for it. For that, he definitely deserves a place in horse heaven. It's an outrage.

Hillary For Homecoming Queen

2007-01-28T20:16:00.000-08:00

You've got to be kidding me. She's the first viable, female candidate for the presidency in the history of the union, and her campaign sign displays only her first name in the lead type, as if she is running for Homecoming queen instead of trying to be elected the leader of the free world. There's even a section called, "Hillary's Story." Maybe her husband should take the cue and change the name of his foundation to the "Bill Foundation," whose Web site now hosts the biography of William J. Clinton.

Yes, I know her last name has some negative connotations for some, or many, many, people. And there could be people who would confuse her with that other Clinton who was recently president. It was a big problem for George W. Bush.

What if she wins? Are we going to call her President Hillary? I wonder what President Bill or President George would think about that. It's an outrage.

Two faces are in fashion

2007-01-22T11:11:00.000-08:00

Yup, those are two snouts. I know from experience that piglets are about the cutest organisms around. I also know from experience that mama pigs get real outraged if you try to come near them. This month seems to be the one for animals born with extra, uh, things.

Throw me a bone. Please.

2007-01-20T13:45:00.000-08:00

A couple months ago I added an interactive feature to "It's an outrage." in order to create an outlet for all the other outraged people out there. Apparently, I seriously underestimated the amount of wrath floating around in the world because "itsanoutrage@gmail.com" has received, count it, ONE electonic message since its inception. And it went straight through the spam filter into the spam folder:

TARGETED EMAIL LIST - 679704

Development tools:

- Provide e-mail list in accordance with your need.

- Custom list, then mailing your email message for
you.

* We provide also mailing Server.

Berke
Marketing Team
Marktinga@tom.com

This mail is for kansasbob@gmail.com.

Kansasbob is outraged. Where's your outrage, people? It's an outrage.

I pee on toilet seats

2007-01-17T21:50:00.000-08:00

Lately, urine has been the topic of some conversations. So for my good friend Beth, and others who will remain nameless, I'd like to express outrage at the people who have an obvious lack of respect for humanity when pee is left on toilet seats. Clearly, all the poems in the world taped to the inside of bathroom stalls aren't working. We need a new approach. Anybody? Anybody?

Well, at least Mothers Against Peeing Standing Up is fighting for the cause.

I'm mostly super pissed I didn't think of these products first. I could be lying on a Bermuda beach and peeing in the ocean. It's an outrage.

Oh, for the love of God

2007-01-15T21:52:00.000-08:00

New episodes of Grey's Anatomy are running now, so I have to crib from the show's catch phrase: Seriously? Seriously? From The New York Times:

The botched hanging of Saddam Hussein and two lieutenants in Iraq by its Shiite-led government has helped to accelerate Sunni-Shiite sectarianism across an already fragile Middle East, according to experts across the region ...

The depth of suspicion, and the readiness among Sunni Arabs to blame the United States for everything grim in Iraq, was reflected in interviews conducted in neighboring countries after the hangings.

“The U.S. is 100 percent guilty,” said Turki al-Rasheed, who heads an organization promoting democracy in Saudi Arabia.
Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, in Egypt on a Middle East tour, joined the recriminations. “I would be the first to say that we were disappointed that there was not greater dignity given to the accused under these circumstances,” she said, referring to Mr. Hussein’s execution and the two carried out Monday. “I think that passions run high after years of turmoil, under dictatorship, and that is apparently what happened. But it shouldn’t have happened and I think that it did not reflect well on the Iraqi government that it came out that way."
When officials from Mr. Maliki’s office appeared at the Baghdad Convention Center with the video of the hangings, they were at pains to offer a minutely-detailed account of their procedures. Their accounts were about equally apologetic and assertive as they explained how Mr. Ibrahim had come to have his head severed, and how sympathy for the condemned man and his family should be attenuated in the light of the brutalities he had committed when serving the regime of his brother.

Seriously? Seriously? We can't trust Iraqis to quell its own civil war, but we trust them to carry out the executions of high-profile former political figures, which, when muddled, do nothing but sever the U.S.'s position on just about everything, including our apparent hypocritical belief in human rights. Even Saudia Arabians, who won't let women drive cars, are saying so. It's an outrage.

You know what I hate?

2007-01-08T22:17:00.000-08:00

I hate visitor centers. So, it might or might not come as a surprise that nothing makes me want to punch the computer more than a little project called the United States Capitol Visitor Center.

A couple days ago, The New York Times printed an update on the still-under-construction, $540-million-and-counting project that remains a hole beneath the Capitol. Despite the hole, the Times has already proclaimed the visitor center a "grand hall" that will allow visitors "to stroll through interactive museum presentations devoted to the history of the building and to Congress," and boast two theaters that will show a 12-minute orientation film. Because, as the millions of people who have visited the Capitol have learned, you have to be orientated to experience the Capitol in all its grandeur. And who would just want to go into the building itself to just see it? We need the grand hall to prepare us to enter this great symbol of democracy.

And, the happy news continues:

“We are not cutting corners,” said Tom Fontana, a spokesman for the project. “All these things have to be just right.”

So, the Capitol Visitor Center is a "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" sort of thing. No matter that U.S. soldiers fighting an urban ground war in Iraq might or might not have proper training or body armor, or that veterans are on months-long waiting lists to see doctors.

The displays in the center will teach people about Congress and democracy, something many Americans don't know a lot about because we don't fund our schools well. And there will be space to exhibit artifacts from the Capitol that have been in hiding, instead of being displayed in museums built very near the Capitol for this purpose. A tunnel from the Capitol to the Library of Congress is being excavated so visitors won't have to walk across the street.

We will spare no expense to build a new entrance to this already-grand building, which came pretty close to being destroyed by a Boeing 757 that didn't plan on going through the metal detectors inside the Capitol's front doors on Sept. 11, 2001. But, because of terrorists who never walked up those front steps, neither can we ever again. How's that for a celebrated symbol of democracy? What an outrage.

P.S. Don't miss the masturbatory Times slide show about the center's construction, which makes it sound like Americans have been standing in line since the beginning of time, braving the elements, just to get inside the Capitol. They have not. In fact, it has only been a handful of years since the Capitol's front steps were cordoned off, and citizens forced to take tours of two or three rooms in the building if they hope to see it at all.

This is not an outrage

2007-01-06T19:46:00.000-08:00

But, you have to know about it.

When the perfect becomes the enemy of the good

2007-01-06T00:02:00.000-08:00

This calf was the product of artificial insemination in Rural Retreat,Va., which was supposed to create a genetically superior cow.

"The calf has two lower jaws, but only one mouth. The calf breathes out of two noses and has two tongues, which move independently... . There appears to be a single socket containing two eyes where the heads split. ... The calf has two lower jaws, but only one mouth."

Boy, that sounds comfortable.

"Bob James, a professor in the dairy science department at Virginia Tech, says that such births are unusual. James said the abnormality could be caused by a developmental problem or a genetic quirk."

Two-faced cows aren't born everyday? No, it couldn't have been a developmental problem or a genetic quirk. That would be crazy. And it would be even crazier that people are flocking to Rural Retreat to see the freak show. And it would be an outrage.

So let me get this straight

2007-01-04T11:18:00.000-08:00

It's four days into 2007, and here's what we have so far:

• President George W. Bush has decided that he can open any mail he wants to, a direct contradiction to a new postal law he just signed.

• We handed a man who was once one of the most wanted men on Earth over to people who apparently did not follow, or did not receive, directions on how to appropriately kill a former dictator. One general admitted we "messed up" the execution. And Bush said, "I wish, obviously, that the proceedings had gone in a more dignified way." He seems to have forgotten that he is the leader of the free world, and if he can open any mail he feels like opening, he can do more than wish for dignity. But, why bother? There's no chance at all that Saddam Hussein's flawed execution could inflame Iraq's sectarian and brutal violence, or cause other tragedies.

• The deceased Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist was doped up on sedatives for the better part of a decade. No wonder he always looked so grumpy.

• A congressman not only opposed allowing Muslim Rep. Keith Ellison to take his oath of office on the Quran, he believes Muslims shouldn't hold public office at all. He also thinks this has something to do with immigration laws that allow some Muslims into the country.

We're off to a grand start. It's an outrage.

A date, sans cleavage

2006-12-30T08:08:00.000-08:00

Oh, yes, we have ourselves another Date Lab doozy. Scene: Jewish law student Amory (who says she could be a model) and Jewish doctor Noah (who says he was once a professional cook) get together to do it up right:

Noah: Everything was easy, but we didn't settle into the "Wow, I feel like I've known you for ages" rhythm. Then when the waitress came, I ordered for us. It's an old-fashioned thing to do, for the guy to order.

Really? You don't say.

Amory: Then in the middle of dinner, he gets a text message from some nurse and goes, "Yeah, it's one of the perks of my job." Some guys think that if they talk about other girls, it'll make you think, He's such a stud ...

Well, he is. Duh.

Amory: ... Of course, he monopolized the conversation and totally excluded me. And he asked why I wasn't showing any cleavage.

Well, why weren't you?

Noah: It was totally within context at the time, but I can't remember how.

Right. You're an outrage who's never getting a date again. At least not in Our Nation's Capital.

A pile of crap

2006-12-22T07:58:00.000-08:00

The most-emailed story on The New York Times' Web site today was headlined, "Saying Yes to Mess:"

"An anti-anticlutter movement is afoot, one that says yes to mess and urges you to embrace your disorder. Studies are piling up that show that messy desks are the vivid signatures of people with creative, limber minds (who reap higher salaries than those with neat 'office landscapes') and that messy closet owners are probably better parents and nicer and cooler than their tidier counterparts.

It’s a movement that confirms what you have known, deep down, all along: really neat people are not avatars of the good life; they are humorless and inflexible prigs, and have way too much time on their hands." [Emphasis added]

My friend Shawn, who, I estimate, is neater than 97.9 percent of the population, was a bit outraged:

"This is just sour grapes from some lazy motherfuckers. 'They are humorless and inflexible prigs, and have way too much time on their hands.' Really? Humorless, inflexible, bored prigs. Interesting. Eat a dick.

The best is when people claim that they can find anything in their piles. This is a lie. But this claim keeps being made because no one ever makes them prove it. Well, I'm calling their bullshit. Oh, you can find anything in your office, even blindfolded, Mr. Springer. Hmmm, where's that Chili's receipt for the tater poppers you plan on deducting from your taxes because it was a 'lunch meeting?' No, please, go ahead, The New York Times gives me all the time I need to work on these re-fucking-diculous puff pieces. I'll just move these loose Legos and bag of cat litter from this chair, have a seat and watch you dig through all your piles, inspecting every slip of paper until you pull out the right one. Please proceed. Asshole."

I think an important question to ask in this debate is how much time the messy people spend accumulating, looking for and moving around all their crap. Does it equal the time neat people spend keeping things neat? I think it's likely that it's the messy, clutter-lovers who have too much time on their hands.

Mr. Springer claims he can't clean up his piles of crap because he can't expend "the emotional energy it would take to sort through all the stuff.” What crap, indeed.

And the proof is that there is at least one show on television, "Clean Sweep," that hopes to teach all viewers of The Learning Channel what to do with the piles of stuff they keep around because they might need it at some imaginary future date. One whole cable television show dedicated to this cause. Clutter, clutter, clutter. It's an outrage and a fire hazard.

The definition of a dipshit in a vacuum

2006-12-18T22:15:00.000-08:00

Finally, after weeks of blah, blah dates between people who seemed to like each other and had nothing interesting or offensive to say beyond that, Date Lab has given us an outrage. So says 31-year-old Brad Robinson, who works in corporate governance:

"I didn't go on this date in a vacuum; I am dating other women. ... I'd give the date a solid 4. I'll take into account whether or not I get along with other people better, but I probably will call her."

But, probably to our utter surprise:

"I never heard from him," reports [Brad's date.] "It's a little bizarre." Brad didn't respond to [The Post's] multiple e-mails and calls.

For some reason, Brad seems to think that even though he admitted he's a dipshit in The Washington Post, which has a rather large circulation, he still is not dating in a vacuum. Me thinks not anymore.

More than a year in the life of my car, part deux

2006-12-18T20:39:00.000-08:00

So friends, here is the verdict: My nearly 19-year-old car is running again thanks to the tow-man and my best friend/roommate, who somehow teamed up to push it out of its parallel-parking spot. The one pop-up light that was stuck down has now been permanently screwed into the upright position. The other one's fuse was fixed. So we're left with the same result a car that looks like it's winking.

But, it doesn't have a functioning blower motor. A blower motor, for you non-mechanical types, is the thing that makes your AC/heat/defroster work. It's the last two that are really of concern to me, and I'm sure, to the car when there is a frozen layer of ice on it. It costs $270 for a new blower motor. And that's what we call a $270 last straw. So, I said, Mr. Mechanic (actually, his name is Benny. Isn't that cute?), give me my diamond-in-the-rough car and its new battery back, blower motor be damned.

And so I drove, and I was mere blocks from my home beginning to look for an open spot to squeeze into when a police car's lights seemed to be pulling me over. Only, in my neighborhood, there's nowhere to pull over. This was only the second time in my entire 26-and-three-quarters years that I've been pulled over. The first time, I was so scared, I pulled over too fast, clipped the curb and popped my tire. This time, I just sat there, unsure of where to go and what to do. After about a minute and a half, I started to think maybe I hadn't been pulled over and I was just confused. Confusion is not very unlike me. So I started to get out of the car, which didn't go over so well, because everybody in the world except for me knows that you're not supposed to get out of the car when you're pulled over. Because, duh, I could have my Glock all ready to go.

Eventually, a cop sauntered up and asked me for the stuff, which I had all prepared. He informed me that my left brake light was out. I acted surprised. Then he asked about the big hole in the middle of my dashboard. I told him that someone bashed my window in and stole the stereo that used to fill the hole. He ran my tags, found out I wasn't a criminal, and sauntered back to give me my stuff. Then he asked about the big hole in the middle of my dashboard. I wanted to ask him if he had just been hit over the head by one of the crack-dealing hoodlums in my neighborhood. But I repeated the Great Window-Bashing, Stereo-Stealing Story of 2005.

It has since been pointed out to me that all of my car problems can be blamed on one person: David Hasselhoff. It was his old show, the one I used to love, "Knight Rider," that is likely responsible for the short-lived popularity of pop-up lights. I'm glad I have another reason to be outraged at David Hasselhoff, as well as the engineer who made it all happen.

More than a year in the life of my car

2006-12-11T21:39:00.000-08:00

I wish I had an actual before picture of my car, but I don't. Neither do I have an after one, because all the digital cameras in my house are broken. It is a 1989 Nissan 240SX. It took me several weeks to learn that. Now, whenever anyone asks what kind of car I have, I recite it like I have memorized it for a test: 1989. Nissan. 240. SX.

It's clear that the main problem with my car is that it's 18-years-old. I'm 26. I was nine when my car was new.

Despite its age, it was practically perfect when I bought it more than a year and a half ago. For two weeks afterward, people stopped me in parking lots to tell me how pristine and amazing it looked. I assume these people knew something about cars.

Come week three, I parked it in a convenience store parking lot at noon. I went inside for five minutes and I think I bought a Subway sandwich (veggie, wheat, cheese, everything except hot peppers). When I came out, my perfect trunk was popped open and the back smashed in. Hit and run. No witnesses in broad daylight. Right.

It was a sign of things to come. I'll skip over the hassle that is the District of Columbia's Car-Registering Train of Hell. Let me just say that the conductor's "computers" twice said that my brakes were not working at all. And yet, by some miracle, I had managed to bring my car to a complete stop in front of the inspecting station. In fact, it stopped many times in the slowly creeping line.

Then, one day not so many days later, I happened upon my beloved with its passenger side window smashed to smitherines and the car's only redeeming quality — its radio and CD player — ripped out. The cop who came to take my report shrugged and said, "This is a bad neighborhood. You should move." Yeah, thanks buddy.

When I finally did get D.C. plates instead of living a life of crime, I forgot to put the sticker on my windshield that in all normal municipalities goes on the back license plate. Two hours later, I had a ticket for $100.

At some point, I parked on the street near my office, opened the door slightly and reached over to the passenger seat to get my bag. My foot nudged the door and it swung open just as another car was grazing past. The car was occupied by a nice old lady. One day, I found a note on my car in a parking lot from someone saying they had nudged my bumper and left their phone number. I crumpled it up and threw it in the back seat. A couple times, my car just hasn't turned on, which typically costs me $400 a non-turn-on.

Recently, I caught a bunch of hoodlums (The use of the word is not an overdramatization. A U.S. Secret Service officer who patrols the neighborhood confirmed that they are crack-dealing gang members.) sitting on my car. I instructed them to remove their bodies from my roof. A few weeks later, one of the retractable headlights, which had been stuck up due to what I can only imagine is some electricity problem, became stuck down.

A few months ago, a 12-passenger van I was waiting behind on a one-way street decided to back into me. My retractable lights popped up for a second and my once-pristine hood was slightly bent. Luckily, the 12-passenger van's insurance company sent me a check for the entire worth of the car no questions asked. So, it wasn't all bad.

The crack-cocaine hoodlums also apparently had fun with my radio attenae, which thanks to the window-smashers is of no use to me now, except that everytime I close my trunk, it catches the attenae. It's sort of fun to watch it spring back up.

And, as I always say, this is what AAA is for. Plus, all in all, it's good for Benny, my mechanic. He's great, and will soon be figuring out how to make my lights retract and unretract, as well as how to make the heat, air-conditioning and fan work again.

And, just by coincidence, I tried to start the car yesterday and exactly nothing happened. No lights of any kind, no 18-year-old engine coughing. Just silence, as if the key in the ignition was meant to be a decoration, rather than a tool to turn the car on and make it move.

Let me just say that the engineer who decided retractable headlights were a cool idea is an outrage.

Hopefully we will evolve past this, too

2006-12-06T21:40:00.000-08:00

Please see today's outrage at America vs. The World.

A Brit sex tape wasn't necessary, but old bones are

2006-12-01T11:36:00.000-08:00

So get this — evangelical church leaders in Kenya are trying to persuade the museum in that country that holds the world's oldest human and pre-human specimens not to put them on display.

Seen together, the fossils basically constitute pretty hardy evidence for Darwin's theory of evolution. And evangelicals aren't into all that, especially the whole ape idea.

Those church people are an outrage if only because the theory of evolution explains the existence of Britney Spears and gives us hope that one day we will evolve past her kind, and that she will be replaced with someone slightly more inclined toward classier fashion choices.

Of wreaths and Oscar Mayer wieners

2006-11-28T20:25:00.000-08:00

Perhaps you've already heard the story of the Great Peace Sign Wreath Fight of 2006. It's just an OK story now, because the homeowner's association of a deed-restricted community caved under the weight of The Associated Press, and decided to let homeowner Lisa Jensen avoid a $25-a-day fine and keep her light-decorated wreath up. They did so even though some clearly batshit-crazy neighbors were offended because they thought the wreath might have something to do with Iraq and soldiers and Satan.

I grew up in a deed-restricted community. It had a guard house and a gate and a golf course in my backyard. It was pristine and pretty and perfect, except that it had no sidewalks. Now the planned, deed-restricted houses being built all over my hometown aren't only pristine and perfect, they are available in maybe 10, and only 10, pastel shades. They do have sidewalks. So it would be tolerable if they hadn't replaced orange groves and horse pastures with concrete to build those subdivisions. The vast swaths of concrete reflect the sun and change the way rain falls and evaporates , and will, scientists predict, alter the town's weather patterns. They also make people sick.

That makes them, of course, outrages.

Talking about pastel, deed-restricted, planned communities makes me want to go all "Fight Club" and Tyler Durden: "I say never be complete. I say stop being perfect. I say let's evolve. Let the chips fall where they may."

They also make me think of one of the best worst movies ever — "Demolition Man" — and Denis Leary in one of the best worst movies ever:

"You see ... I'm the enemy 'cause I like to think, I like to read. I'm into freedom of speech and freedom of choice. I'm the kind of guy who likes to sit in a greasy spoon and wonder, "Gee, should I have the T-bone steak or the jumbo rack of barbecued ribs with the side order of gravy fries?" I want high cholesterol. I wanna eat bacon and butter and buckets of cheese, OK?

I want to smoke a Cuban cigar the size of Cincinnati in the non-smoking section. I want to run through the streets naked with green Jello all over my body reading Playboy Magazine. Why? Because I suddenly might feel the need to, OK, pal?

I've seen the future. Do you know what it is? It's a 47-year-old virgin sitting around in his beige pajamas drinking a banana-broccoli shake singing, 'I'm an Oscar Mayer wiener.'"

This is really why they call it Black Friday

2006-11-24T08:59:00.000-08:00

So reports The New York Times:

"Even those who arrived early Friday and waited in line for the doors to open at 5 a.m. were not guaranteed success. Brian Clark, 27, of Bristol left empty-handed after the televisions and computers he'd eyed as Christmas gifts were snatched by earlier shoppers.

Alarmed by a recent shooting of a customer waiting outside a Connecticut Wal-Mart store for Sony's PlayStation 3, which are almost impossible to find, Clark had tucked his Glock pistol in a holster under his jacket and put extra ammunition in his pocket before heading out early Friday.
''Not that I'll probably need it, but just in case. You never know these days,'' he said, quickly adding that he has a state permit for a concealed weapon."

Yep, just in case. I am all for the Second Amendment, but that's an outrage.

Damn.

2006-11-23T17:40:00.000-08:00

I guess we have to give credit where credit is due when four-hour-long sex tapes of pop stars and their back-up dancers turn out not to exist because the human race is made up of a bunch of stinking liars and tabloids that will do anything to sell papers. That's the real outrage.

Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes: The worst thing to happen to Scientology since L. Ron Hubbard

2006-11-21T19:27:00.000-08:00

It must be true. I read it in The New York Times, on TimesSelect even:

"... The bridegroom might hear the Scientology minister proffer this advice, part of what the church refers to as the traditional ceremony: ''Now, Tom, girls need clothes and food and tender happiness and frills, a pan, a comb, perhaps a cat. All caprice if you will, but still they need them.''

And Ms. Holmes could be told: ''Hear well, sweet Katie, for promise binds. Young men are free and may forget. Remind him then that you may have necessities and follies, too.''

A cat? A cat! But, what if I don't want a cat? What if I like puppies? I do like puppies. But, clothes are something I can compromise on. And pans, because I like to cook.

Also, note that Tom and Katie should have no problems making it onto the Times' nuptials page. Check out the eyebrows. It continues to be an outrage. I wonder if they'll do a Vows video for the Times. But there's probably nothing about that in Hubbard's ceremony. The Internet was sort of after his time, no?

Division I college sports are an outrage.

2006-11-17T20:44:00.000-08:00

Even if some fans don't, I understand that they love football for the same reason others love chess — it's a metaphor for life. There is strategy, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose and sometimes it isn't fair. And, once in a while, there is a magical moment when anything is possible.

The Ivy League walked away from Division I football in 1981, and nothing has happened to diminish its members' standings as superior academic institutions, and every year more and more students vie for the few spots there, even though their football games are rarely seen on television. Yet, Ivy Leaguers have been bemoaning the loss of their football stature despite all the serious advantages their education gives them, says The New York Times this week:

“It’s depressing when you can walk up to one of those great old Ivy League places 15 minutes before game time and buy a ticket without even waiting in line,” said Joe Restic, who coached at Harvard for 23 seasons beginning in 1971. “It all started with the I-AA classification. Right away the recruits said to us, ‘I don’t want to play with the second-class
citizens.’"

Read: I got an Ivy League education, but no one wanted to see my football games. Boo-hoo.

At most Division I universities, football coaches are paid more than the university's president even though many sports programs operate in the red. As far as I'm concerned, that's all you need to know about the NCAA, why it should become an arm of the professional sports leagues, and why it should admit that there is no such thing as a "student-athlete." Students who choose to play sports with the NCAA should be paid well. But, of course, most students wouldn't be able to do that because the idea that a Division I football or basketball player can both study and play at a high level is a mockery wrapped inside a sham.

That's why reforming college sports programs after years of scandals seems to be an exercise in futility because few people are willing to stand up and just admit that big-time college sports and higher education are contradictions in terms.

Murray Sperber, an Indiana University professor regarded as an expert on college athletics, has argued that the proliferation of Division I NCAA sports not only harms "student-athletes," but allows universities to water down their undergraduate programs. In his most famous writing on the subject, he shows that schools outside the Ivy League, such as Emory University — which shunned Division I status — have excelled academically.

Brig Walker, a senior linebacker at Princeton, was a promising player who turned down a scholarship from Oregon State even though Princeton wouldn't give him one to play there.

“It was an anguishing time because every kid dreams of playing before 100,000 people in a big bowl game,” Walker said in the moments after Princeton upset Yale last weekend. ... “That would have been pretty fun. But I’m happy now with my decision. I guess you can’t have it both ways.”

Division I schools and the NCAA want to have it both ways. But sometimes life isn't fair. And even without Division I as we know it, magic is still possible.

Nothing beautiful here

2006-11-17T11:32:00.000-08:00

In stark contrast to the prettiness below, this is truly an outrage.

And the tapes just keep on coming

2006-11-15T00:53:00.000-08:00

I wanted to show you a pretty picture I cropped to soften the blow of what you're about to read.

There is a sex tape. It is four hours long. And K-Fed might use it to extort money from his soon-to-be thin ex-wife. And he'll take the kids with the sex tape, because he's a very good father.

It's too much of an outrage to contemplate, and yet too good to be true for millions of humans of the male heterosexual persuasion. Screenwriters sitting around a table full of donuts could have come up with this script in, oh, about five minutes give or take the time spent guzzling Starbucks.

Please, just make the outrage stop.

Just another sexist study

2006-11-13T19:12:00.000-08:00

Oh, so now we can't have a steak? It's an outrage.

Prank calling is dead

2006-11-13T09:54:00.000-08:00

What happened to the fun and mystery of anonymity? It's gone the way of the 8-track on the back of caller ID and the IP address.

The cell phones meant to connect us have given us more of a reason to disconnect. No longer can you call your crush just to say hi. Now, every ring has meaning and you have to be prepared to say something even if they don't pick up. They'll know you called so you have to leave a message. And there's no more just hanging up if you lose your nerve.

I shouldn't complain, really, because I've recently become obsessed with my SiteMeter, which will tell me when, from where and for how long you read this. It even tells me that you found my blog because you searched for "penis pictures" on Blogger, or "240sx retractable lights." I'm fourth on Google for that one. Plus, there have been many people searching for "suki kim modern love." Call me paranoid, but I think they might be out to get me.

I'm not for stalking, but when you can no longer call a million boys during slumber parties or send 20 pizzas to your enemies, it's an outrage.

Yes! Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes! Oh. No.

2006-11-07T15:35:00.000-08:00

Updated: There's only two things that could make Election Day an even better day than it already is and those, of course, were Britney Spears and Harry Reid.

[Reid] spent most of the momentous day in his Senate office, waiting. Just after 2 p.m., he finally heard some actual news: Britney Spears was filing for divorce.

“Britney Spears,” Mr. Reid said, shaking his head. “She loses a little weight, and now she’s getting all cocky about things.” He added, “Britney has gotten her mojo back.”

Alrighty then. A couple years ago, I was sitting among Peace Corps friends in a far away land and we were pouring over the stacks of various trash magazines that had been sent to us. The news of Spears' recent nuptials were all over the covers, and we started taking casual bets on how long the lovebirds would last. I bet two years. Oh, yes.

The problem now is that none of us can remember what we bet, if anything. I guess we should have written it down.

But, if true, Spears has easily leaped the expanse from classless spectacle to classless outrage with this report. I Wnt to Dvrce U? I think future generations will point to Dec. 3, 1992 as the day civilization began its downfall. It's an outrage.

Vote. Today.

2006-11-07T06:13:00.000-08:00

If you can and don't, you are an outrage.

Rock Kay Bailey Hutchison

2006-11-06T13:27:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow, the 560,000 or so residents of the District of Columbia will get the chance to vote for their leaders. Most of them won't because the vast majority of their races were decided in September's primary.

The reason for that is the same reason all Republican congresses refuse to allow the District's citizens to select a voting member of the House of Representatives and two senators — 75 percent of the District's residents are registered Democrats. Only one of the 13 D.C. Council members is a Republican.

So it makes sense, especially at this moment, that voting to install three more Democratic Congressmen is not pragmatic for Republicans. Of course, because I am product of my country, I think principles should trump all that. But I am no spring chicken, so I get it.

What I can't stand is Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison. Ms. Hutchison, who by the way tried to repeal the District's hand-gun ban last year, has said the District doesn't need votes in Congress because every District resident is represented by all 535 Congresspersons under the Constitution's District clause. Though Congress allows the District a lot of autonomy, it technically still has the last word on District laws. So, hmmm.

Now, I don't know what they teach in Texas about representative democracies. But where the rest of us come from, voting is kind of the thing that makes the whole representative part of the democracy idea work. My vote is the hostage I can hold if you don't do what I want. It is also the gift I will give you if I like what you've done. But D.C. residents can't vote for or against Kay Bailey Hutchison. If she decides to sponsor a bill allowing District citizens to carry concealed machine guns, all they can do is whine.

So, Ms. Hutchison, say you don't want more Democrats in Congress. Say you think District residents are stupid and don't deserve to vote. Say, "Hey, at least you get to vote for the president."

Just don't say you represent me. It's an outrage.

It's an outrage at America vs. The World

2006-11-02T20:43:00.000-08:00

Today's outrage is here. Yay.

Asteroids 1, Powerball 0

2006-10-31T11:34:00.000-08:00

I've never bought a lottery ticket merely because it never occurs to me to play. Whenever there's a big pot and lines form at convenience stores everywhere, I think there must be a sale on Bud Light. But now I feel entirely justified in my ignorance:

"... There's only a one in a million chance any year that an asteroid will strike us — which makes a civilization-ending encounter more than 100 times as likely as winning the Powerball."

This revelation in a Washington Post story came from a new display in the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum — the most-visited museum in the world. Powerball, that's what is called bad press. And that's why people who wait in line for lottery tickets should maybe think that while they are standing there they are much more likely to be killed by a gigantic rock hurtling toward Earth than to win a whole bunch of cash.

If that's not an outrage, I don't know what is.

Proof that blind dates are only for other people's reading pleasure

2006-10-29T04:21:00.000-08:00

"Date Lab" is a weekly feature that was recently introduced by The Washington Post Magazine in order to get members of my generation to read it. It's working.

It's fabulously outrageous and not nearly as awkwardly awful to watch as dating shows, mostly because the vast majority of dates are like reading a play-by-play of a horrific car accident. How many times does a guy have to read "Date Lab" in order to understand that it's not OK to mention that a girl ate a lot at dinner, and it was probably because the Post was paying for it?

The single exception was the eye-rolling inducing date that ended in an engagement four weeks later.

While both guys and dolls present themselves as douchebags during their date labs, this week, the male dater was truly a colostomy bag and an outrage:

"I didn't know the whole night that she was black — (not that) it would have made a difference. Culturally, she's a white girl. I may have to go back and talk to the hostess, though. She was a sista with dreadlocks. Definitely my type: young, cute and skinny."

Who says that in print?

No one wants to see it

2006-10-26T10:39:00.000-07:00

Boys, trust me when you read what I'm about to write: No one, save for maybe, maybe the person who is having sex with you, wants to see a picture of your penis.

It might seem to be a simple and obvious message, but a lot of boys on Craigslist don't know about this rule. Warning: This is graphic content you probably do not want to see. These are just a handful of the many that occur in the M4W category — proof that there are lots of men out there who think women like to see penis pictures. Yes I know you aren't one of them, but believe me boys, they don't.

There are many reasons why, but the easy one is that pictures of penises are an outrage.

2006-10-19T07:19:00.000-07:00

Just too easy

This is Aleksey Vayner. Apparently, he is a Yale graduate who is a famous douchebag now because one of the Wall Street brokers he sent this video resume to leaked it on YouTube, just after they laughed until they cried and rolled their eyes into the top of their brains. It's worth the six and a half minutes. And it's almost too obvious an outrage.

Finally

2006-10-16T12:45:00.000-07:00

"Grey's Anatomy" has overtaken "CSI" in the ratings recently, if only some weeks and only by a slim margin. That's because "CSI" is a bad show and "Grey's Anatomy" is not. Yes, Meredith is getting annoying, I can nap through Burke's dramatic pauses and McDreamy is an asshole, but at least we can say they have personalities and are an attempt at character development. They smile and cry, and sometimes they even raise their voices.

I know that for a reason having to do with the lowest-common denominator, "CSI" has been the most popular show in America. Yet it stuns me that good actors like Gary Sinise agree to be cast in a show that apparently calls for all the lines to be delivered in monotones. Every. Single. One. And I swear that's the only face he's allowed to make on "CSI: NY."

And everybody knows that the people who wear white lab coats and work in the lab are never the same people who carry guns and wear sunglasses in pursuit of killers. If it were "Law and Order" it would be like the cops suddenly morphing into prosecutors in the second half of the show. And what's with the weird colors in Miami? One scene everyone's blue. The next, they are shaded yellow. It's as if the editing and graphics people just wanted to see what they could get away with and gave everyone jaundice for fun. But it's not fun at all. In fact, it's an outrage.

And I totally want the calendar.

Modern love?

2006-10-10T17:39:00.000-07:00

Generally, I think The New York Times is on the ball. I even think it apologizes way too often for stuff it shouldn't. But lately, the weekly essay column "Modern Love" has been bugging me. What's wrong with these morons who write gracefully about their romantically-charged marital dilemmas, hoping good writing will cover up the fact that they are idiots who forgot to ask their fiances whether they wanted children before they got married?

It's clear that I'm no relationship expert, but, hello?

And who is this person? Who? Well, I'll tell you who she is. Her name is a Suki Kim, and she was a 2006 Guggenheim fellow in fiction. Her book, "The Interpreter," was printed by a reputable publishing house. And she lived with a guy in London when she was 21, whom she supposedly loved, and yet couldn't stand. Her relationship was apparently "One Long Lesson in How to Break Up." (You could read her whole "Modern Love" essay, but TimesSelect, an evil invention I'm sure, won't let you so I'll just have to give you excerpts.)

"LOVEMAKING was no better. Inevitably, I would stop in the middle by putting a hand on his shoulder or his chest, and he would slow down with a sigh, and then silently we would both turn to the wall, often with him embracing me from behind. Soon we slept in separate rooms.

We were like an aged couple who had been through it all, retreating to our single beds with compassion, except that we were 21 and had known each other for barely a year....We were not having sex, and yet we were not interested in having sex with anyone else. The longer this continued, the more fiercely we insisted on being with each other because we were young and believed that there must have been a greater meaning to our incompatibility."

And it even goes on:

"At night we cooked omelets and spaghetti and washed them down with wine. We must have tried sex and failed again, because on one of our last nights, he said, ''When I'm with you, I feel incredibly alive, and yet always terrible.''

Oh, please. You weren't young and in love. You were dating a psychotic masochist. Why does the Times print this inane blather written by clearly neurotic and unbalanced people? It's an outrage.

P.S. To be fair, even though It's an Outrage. clearly isn't about fairness, I have not read Kim's novel. It is probably good, seeing as it has won awards and there are a lot of books out there that haven't.

Slow-cooked squirrel

2006-10-09T11:32:00.000-07:00

Oh, come on. Don't they know squirrels are just rats with cuter outfits? There's one with liver, too.

Yes, I would like some cheese and a hammer

2006-10-05T22:04:00.000-07:00

Allow me to whine.

I worked until 3:30 a.m. Wednesday morning. I arrived home around 4 a.m., and didn't fall asleep until past 5 a.m., at which point I had been awake for more than 22 hours. At 11 a.m., I was awoken by men, in my alley, prying furniture apart with hammers and throwing the remnants into a Dumpster with all of their might. Enraged, I lept out of bed and marched downstairs to give their boss a piece of my mind.

"Sometimes they get carried away," he said. Carried away? With a hammer? I can't imagine. By the time I got back upstairs, the hammering men were long gone, but I was awake and wanted a hammer of my own to get carried away with. Eventually, in my delirium I decided to try to turn my car on since I hadn't done so in a good three weeks. Then I decided to drive it around. It's a 1989 Nissan 240SX, and its retractable lights became stuck up a few weeks ago, so it now looks like some sort of cartoon car that's winking at you.

With no direction in mind, I ended up at Trader Joe's. As soon as I turned the car off, I knew I was screwed. It wouldn't turn back on. It wouldn't even try to turn back on. Luckily, I know and love AAA. In the meantime, I was at Trader Joe's, wandering around in the delirium. I bought five pounds of onions, chicken broth, peanut butter and a cajun shrimp roll. I made two passes by the macaroni and cheese sample stand. The AAA guy came, shifted the winking 240SX into neutral and turned it on. Voila. I drove home, carried my 15 pounds of broth and onions upstairs and collapsed.

Thursday at 8 a.m. I had jury duty. But that's another outrage for another day.

It's them

2006-10-02T21:54:00.000-07:00

A friend who is a boy confirmed that this is how many men think. I knew it. I've officially called off the search, to the extent that there ever was one. You might as well lock me in a convent and throw away the key. And to think that for the longest time, I thought I was the screwed up one.
It's an outrage.

Somebody needs to be kicked off the island

2006-09-08T10:20:00.000-07:00

"Until 'Survivor' host Jeff Probst sat in on casting sessions for the CBS reality series's new edition, in which competitors were picked and put into "tribes" based on their ethnic background, he had not realized that 'Asian' includes Japanese, Koreans and Chinese and that they do not necessarily like each other as a matter of ethnic solidarity."

What? Probst, have you ever heard of a little fight called World War II? I don't care if you grew up in Wichita. You're an outrage.

Don't Hassel the Hoff?

2006-09-06T21:13:00.000-07:00

Did everyone else know that David Hasselhoff is popular in Europe and is currently doing an Australian tour? How could you keep this from me? This video was made in 1993 and it's no joke. Don't get me wrong -- it's hysterical. But it's an outrage.

America vs. The World

2006-09-01T08:15:00.000-07:00

Today, my outrage is seriously outrageous, and it's posted here. My good friends B Buck and Gordon the Gnome graciously allow me spout-off space on their incredibly intelligent and funny blog. That's not an outrage.

Brats in foodland

2006-08-31T08:13:00.000-07:00

OK, people, Lesson No. 1 one in child rearing: When you reproduce, you are no longer allowed the luxury of toting your progeny along with about six or 10 of your friends' progeny to white-tablecloth restaurants. Do you know how many little tatterdemalions that makes? It's a lot, depending on how many times you and your friends have popped one out.

I love kids and kids love me. I have proof. But there are only four appropriate eating places for that many snot-nosed pups -- McDonald's, Chuck E. Cheese, Pizza Hut and possibly American Girl Place in Chicago. This rule is for the good of everyone involved. It's why Chuck E. Cheese was invented.

If you don't follow this rule, something bad might happen. For example, the other people in the restaurant might keep glaring at you, the pastel-colored and matching moms, while you obliviously eat your Cobb salad and your kids dump spaghetti on the floor. And who knows? One day someone might just freak out, snatch one of the miniature darlings and mop the spaghetti off the floor with him.

I'm just saying. Something bad might happen. It's an outrage.

It's a sign

2006-08-29T17:29:00.000-07:00

I'm not certain that I want to go to law school, and the Law School Admission Council isn't making it easier for me to decide. Is it a sign? I dated someone who said he didn't believe in signs. I should have known that was a sign he was going to stomp all over my pretty heart.

First, I tried to sign up for the Law School Admission Test two months before it will be given in September and one month before the sign-up deadline. No available seats within 100 miles of the District of effing Columbia. This is me giving the finger to all those excessively early overachievers. Jesus effing Christ. Hrmpphhh. Arghhhhh. God dammit all to hell.

Fine, fine, fine. Whatever.

I decided to suck it up and sign up for the December test. But you can't just fill out a form and click the button that says "Yes, I will gladly pay you $118 to play your stupid logic games." That would be very un-law schoollike. First, you have to download a program. It is called "Citrix ICA Client." I don't know what the crap it does or why it's so important, but I downloaded it, and I filled out all the forms. I told them to send me information about people who would like to loan me about $150,000, I told them I was born in Joliet, Ill. where there was once a very large jail, I told them I majored in journalism even though that might have made Citrix laugh. I got to the part where they asked for my credit card number so they could gladly charge me $118 to play their stupid logic games.

Then I went to the bathroom. When I came back, Citrix was gone. Citrix has never returned. I went back into Citrix to try to find the application again. I went back to the Web site to try to find it in there. I tried to download Citrix again. And again. And again on a different computer. There is something wrong with the Stuffit Expander. And by the way, which is it? Does it stuff or expand? Stuffit Expander told me to download a new version of Stuffit Expander. What? Is it serious? Now it's just mocking me.

It's a sign. And it's an outrage.

'Eyebrows on exactly the same level'

2006-08-25T09:13:00.000-07:00

The venerable New York Times wedding pages have been the subject of many a rant and rave, particularly since the advent of the Internet. And the paper's online editors recently upped the ante. Now, readers who can't wait for Sunday's printed orgy of the wealthy, well-connected and uber-educated can watch these people profess their love on film at the paper's Web site.

My favorite, so far, is a little show I like to call The Catatonic Couple. I can't say that I've ever seen two people captured on film seem less excited to be marrying one another. Apart from the banjo, these people don't even seem to like each other.

The wedding announcements, and the mysterious-yet-not-so-mysterious manner in which they are selected, are proof that merely becoming wedded to the supposed love of your life isn't enough for some people. For those people, here's hoping your father is a CEO, and if not, you or your beloved at least graduated from Harvard Law. Most importantly, it is critical to line up your eyebrows with those of your intended. I couldn't make that up if I tried.

It's bad enough that the Times' society editors still deem themselves the arbiters of who is worthy enough to proclaim their love on their pages. Now they've decided everyone wants to know the mind-numbing details of how these mostly Ivy League-educated ladder-climbers found each other. And the sad truth is that people do. Unlike the Times' famous columnist Thomas Friedman, whose words have cost cash online for almost a year, anyone can get wedding announcements going back all the way to 1981 for free. The Times is obviously making bank off the clicks on these things.

I don't think I can say it any better than fellow-appallee, Slate writer Troy Patterson: "Who are these people? Why are they so pleased with themselves? Why can't I stop watching?" It's an outrage.

Itsanoutrage.blogspot.com is an outrage

2006-08-23T18:07:00.000-07:00

I haven't yet filed this as an official protest, but I just don't understand why there isn't an expiration date on some Blogger URLs. As you can see, some apparently inebriated ragamuffins created www.itsanoutrage.blogspot.com in 2004, posted some nonsense that can barely pass for English, much less outrage, and promptly abandoned it after two days.

I write superbly in English, I have legitimate outrage, and yet I'm forced to utilize the second-class system of dashes in order to pass my outrage on to the greater Internet world. In the meantime, itsanoutrage.com is for sale. At least they are using it to make money. Otherwise, it's an outrage.

Take your music and turn it off

2006-08-22T16:37:00.000-07:00

To: MySpace Music-as-a-Weapon Wielders
From: A silence-loving member of your world
I'm in favor of everyone's right to their own music. After all, I like some pretty shameful stuff. We don't really need to get into specifics, but think line dancing. That doesn't mean I have to tell the 100 million people who might happen across my MySpace page that I once knew all the words to Billy Ray Cyrus' "Achy Breaky Heart." But it turns out that most people don't feel the way I do, and on the few occasions I'm actually surfing MySpace, I am constantly and suddenly assaulted by music at a time and place not of my own choosing. It's an outrage.

It's an outrage, but not an exclamation

2006-08-21T13:41:00.001-07:00

Exclamation points are used far too frequently, even in the context of an outrage.