"Welcoming O.J. Simpson to Orange County"

• The OC Register (Cheney confronts San Clemente protesters with a smile) reports that two dozen or so people participated in a peaceful protest outside the gate of Casa Assh*le in San Clemente yesterday, where Vice President Dick “S & W” Cheney attended a private fundraiser honoring Ken “Hooker” Calvert. Maybe 200 people attended the fundraiser, checkbooks in hand.

I guess it was a kind of auction.

Meanwhile, outside the gates, protesters yelled “war criminal” and such. One sign read, “McCain=Bush III.” Referring to Cheney, one protester opined, “It was almost like they were welcoming O.J. Simpson to Orange County.” That’s pretty good, although Simpson only killed two people, y’know, and he didn’t make any money doing it.

The Reg reporter talked to that rat bastard Calvert, who explained that “the president has kept us safe the last eight years.”

OC Register video of protest


• Yesterday, the Reg (Thief took computer, then called to ask for parts) told the delightful story of a thief who stole a computer and then came back to buy parts for it.

Well, at first, the guy just phoned the store, ‘cause the computer had missing parts. Turns out this computer is pretty distinctive, and the parts it needs are distinctive too. So employees got suspicious; they asked for the serial number. Bingo.

The next part of the story helps explain why I read the paper each morning:

Employees called the police, who were present at the building when the man showed up, but were unable to make it to the entrance before he left the scene.

• This next story is pretty special too. According to Inside Higher Ed, some guy is in the hot seat over a situation that arose when he was chancellor of North Carolina Central University, in Mayberry. During this fellow's chancellorship, the university

started a degree-granting program in a church outside of Atlanta, run by a donor and board member, without the permission of North Carolina officials or accreditors.

That nobody was told about this program is special all by itself. That it was at a church is good, too. But that this thing was run by a trustee and donor puts this way over the top.

• Meanwhile (again, according to Inside Higher Ed), “San Jose State University’s English department has announced the 2008 ‘winners’ of its Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, which honors the worst possible opening lines for fiction.”

Here’s the winning entry:

“Theirs was a New York love, a checkered taxi ride burning rubber, and like the city their passion was open 24/7, steam rising from their bodies like slick streets exhaling warm, moist, white breath through manhole covers stamped ‘Forged by DeLaney Bros., Piscataway, N.J.’”

I don’t get it. That’s a great opening line. Imagine the illustrations!