MORE NEWS

Tulsa's mayoral campaign is a dirty business. Acrimony prevails. With this in mind, the moderator at a candidates forum asked the competitors, "If you were not a mayoral candidate, which of the other candidates would you vote for?"


Here are the answers.

• Republican Dewey Bartlett Jr.: "I don't believe the others have that level that is required for the city."


• Independent Mark Perkins: "There is a mentality of perspective that is important that involves leadership and judgement and understanding that I think I'm the only one that has exhibited so far."


• Democrat Tom Adelson: "If I had to choose between the two I'd go with Dewey Perkins or Mark Bartlett."

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Today's theological question is: May Jews ride elevators on the Sabbath?


The Sabbath, from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday, is a day of rest. Jews are not supposed to ride in cars, cook or turn on lights. Orthodox Jews even tear their toilet paper in advance of the Sabbath. But what about elevators?


In Israel, elevators for the orthodox run continuously and stop on every floor. The thinking is, as long as you don't push any buttons it's OK. But now, a board of rabbis has ruled that even these automatic elevators are not Kosher. So for the devout, it's back to the stairs for now.


The problem with Judaism is that there's no Pope to tell you absolutely what's right and what's wrong. One could look to the Torah for guidance but nowhere in the Bible are elevators mentioned, nor are they cited in the Talmud.


So as far as interpreting the the law goes, all Jews can do is argue about it. And Jews are good at that. Ask any two Jews, and you're sure to get at least three opinions.

***

New Jersey bureaucrats have threatened to fine the Missionaries of God for feeding the homeless in JFK park because the missionaries don't have a mobile food vendor license.


No good deed shall go unpunished.

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LOTS'A NEWS

The Pope is poaching Anglicans.

The Catholic church is asking Anglicans to become Catholics.

It's specifically targeting Anglicans who are fed up with gay priests and same sex unions: you know, all that homo stuff.

Even married Anglican priests can become Catholic priests and keep their wives. It's not clear to me, however, if they'll be allowed to keep having sex with their wives.

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Do you ever wonder if those TSA screeners at the airport who search your checked luggage sometimes steal stuff? The answer is: Yes, sometimes they do.

The latest was a TSA screener at Philadelphia International Airport, who was caught with more laptops than a guy should have.

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Forget about the pig flu and the bird flu. There's a new flu in town.

The dog flu.

It's the H3N8 virus. You can't catch it from dogs. In fact, you can't catch it at all. But dogs can catch it from each other.

Is your dog sneezing, sniffling, coughing or lethargic? It may have H3N8. It's 5% fatal.

There is a dog flu vaccine. It costs $45. Your insurance may not cover it.

***

Here's a gift suggestion for the guy who has everything except a penile extender with "comfort strap" technology: a penile extender with "comfort strap" technology from X4 Labs.

Prices start at $200 dollars and go on up depending on options, like a silicone harness, hybrid support system and solid gold construction. Financing is available starting at $50 a month. And there is a 180 day growth guarantee on some models.

Accessories are also available, including a penis ring, plunger pump, prostate massager, mahogany storage box, travel bag and a t-shirt to "let others know that you are just bigger and better than them."

A Saudi businessman recently ordered his in 24 karat gold studded with diamonds and rubies.

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NEWS FROM ALL OVER

Here in Tulsa, a pickup crashed into a quarry killing three of the four people on board. Only one passenger survived.

Police say the driver was going "at an excessive speed and with reckless and wanton disregard for the safety of himself and his passengers." The truck ran a stop sign, smashed through a pipe gate, crashed through boulders further blocking the gate, went airborne for 242 feet over a large boulder and dirt mound blocking the road, then hit two more boulders before falling 170 feet into the quarry pit.

So naturally, relatives of one of the victims are suing the quarry.

To be fair, they're also suing the driver, but he's dead.

***

The Oklahoma State Legislature has decided to put up a 10 commandments monument at the state capitol building, but now they can't decide where to put it.

The State Architect wants to put it on the north side, because that area was originally designed for monuments.

But opponents say the north side is not handicapped accessible and want it elsewhere.

And the A.C.L.U. doesn't want it anywhere.

Perhaps somewhere in the bible there is guidance about where to place the monument.

***

A justice of the peace in Louisiana has refused to marry an interracial couple. Keith Ballard says, "I'm not a racist. I just don't believe in mixing the races that way."

Yeah, and I'm sure that some of his best friends are black.

***

Be careful of the cash you spend at Target.

A woman paid with a $100 bill at the Greenville, South Carolina, Target. But a clerk decided the bill was counterfeit, so the store sent the woman's picture to 75 other businesses in town as a warning.

Only it turned out the bill wasn't counterfeit.

This could never happen to me. The last time I saw a $100 bill was at my Bar Mitzvah.

***

A travel tip: The Tennessee Williams Festival is on in Clarksdale, Mississippi, and features a Stella shouting contest.

"Stelaaaaaaaa!"

***

Rumors say Italy has been paying off the Taliban in Afghanistan instead of fighting them.

The Italian government denies the rumor, but really this may not be a bad idea. Given what the U.S. is spending in Afghanistan, we might do better to pay the Taliban directly and cut out the middlemen.

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RUSH LIMBAUGH ON RACE

Rush Limbaugh on Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates: "He's a racist. He's an angry racist."

Rush Limbaugh on Supreme Court Justice Sonja Sotomayor: "She's a bigot. She's a racist."

Rush Limbaugh on President Barack Obama: "The biggest reverse racist in history."

Rush Limbaugh on Obama's appointments: "How do you get promoted in a Barack Obama administration? By hating white people."

Rush Limbaugh on Democrats: "The racism that everybody thinks exists on our side of the aisle has been on full display throughout their primary campaign."


Rush Limbaugh on liberals: "You know, racism in this country is the exclusive province of the left."

Rush Limbaugh on the media: "We're witnessing racism all this week that led up to the inauguration. We're being told that we have to hope he succeeds. That we have to bend over, grab the ankles, bend over forward, backward, whichever, because his father's black, because this is the first black president."

Rush Limbaugh on minorities: "The days of them not having any power are over, and they are angry. And they want to use their power as a means of retribution. That's what Obama's about, gang. He's angry, he's gonna cut this country down to size, he's gonna make it pay for all the multicultural mistakes that it has made, it's mistreatment of minorities. I know exactly what's going on."

Rush Limbaugh on the NFL: "An outpost of racism and liberalism."

Rush Limbaugh on the GOP: "They're moving to the back of the bus. They're saying, 'I can't use that drinking fountain? Okay. I can't use that restroom? Okay.' That's the modern day Republican Party. The equivalent of the Old South. The new oppressed minority."

Rush Limbaugh on white people: "Obama’s America, white kids getting beat up on school buses now. You put your kids on a school bus, you expect safety but in Obama’s America the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering, 'Yay, right on, right on, right on, right on,' and, of course, everybody says the white kid deserved it, he was born a racist, he’s white."

Rush Limbaugh on Somali pirates: "If only President Obama had known that the three Somali community organizers were actually young black Muslim teenagers I'm sure he wouldn't have given the order to shoot."

(From Conor Friedersdorf in The Daily Beast)

WHEELIES, POT, GOD AND HISTORY

The twenty-year-old was showing off when he popped a wheelie with his motorcycle in a Tulsa parking lot.

He crashed and died.

Here in Oklahoma, it's not uncommon for a guy's last words to be, "Watch this!"

***

News release from the Pastor Marc Grizzard at the Amazing Grace Baptist Church in Canton, North Carolina:

"Come to our Halloween book burning. We are burning Satan's bibles like the NIV, RSV, NKJV, TLB, NASB, NEV, NRSV, ASV, NWT, Good News for Modern Man, The Evidence Bible, The Message Bible, The Green Bible, ect. These are perversions of God's Word the King James Bible."

They'll also be burning books by "heretics," such as James Dobson, Oral Roberts, Billy Graham, Robert Schuller, Mother Teresa and the Pope.

Not sure what's so special about the KJV, given that the original books of the bible were not in English. I think religion just makes people goofy.

***

A Philadelphia roofer died falling 125 feet off a church.

There is no God.

***

Mom and dad were helping their 15 year old put up a ham radio antenna in Florida when the mast hit a 13,000 volt power line.

The bad news is, they were all electrocuted.

The good news is, the 13,000 volt signal was received in Australia.

(I just made up that last part. There was no good news.)

***

Six protesters were arrested for trying to plant pot at the Drug Enforcement Administration headquarters in Virginia.

To be fair, they say they were planting hemp seeds. But the hemp plant is indistinguishable from the pot plant. They're the same plant.

Nice try, guys. Go smoke a rope.

***

Joseph Stalin's grandson sued a Russian newspaper for reporting that Stalin was a "bloodthirsty cannibal" who sent thousands of people to their to their deaths.

But the court ruled that Stalin was, in fact, a bloodthirsty cannibal who sent thousands of people to there deaths, so there.

(Actually, Stalin's policies resulted in the deaths of tens of millions, but why quibble.)

***

And on this day in 1812, a wannabe assassin shot former president Theodore Roosevelt in a Milwaukee auditorium. Roosevelt stopped the audience from lynching the guy, and then went on to deliver a 90 minute speech before going to the hospital. He carried that bullet in his chest for the rest of his life.

What a guy!

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DOES OKLAHOMA HEART HEALTH CARE?

A couple of Oklahoma State Senators held forth on health care at one of those town hall type meetings in a Broken Arrow church.

They're against it.

Senator John Trebilcock said, "It all comes down to one word -- liberty, the liberty to not have health care if you don't want it."

.

Huh?

Senator Mike Ritze said, "Let the free enterprise system solve the problem."

Ritze is a physician.

He also said, "Whatever the federal government does, we will stop it at the border of Oklahoma."

Ritze later explained that he would still let Medicare and Medicaid cross the border.

IT'S ALL ABOUT ME

By way of introduction, my name is Marc Sherman. I was born in the first half of the last century. I’ve been a native Tulsan for 26 years.

I like Tulsa. It’s just so easy to live here. It’s easy to get around. I can get from anywhere to anywhere in no more than a half hour. There are no real traffic jams. You want traffic jams? Go to New Jersey. That’s where I grew up.

It’s also easy to get jobs here. I should know. I’ve had twelve of them. At least.

My wife is from New Jersey. We grew up fairly near each other. But we met in Tulsa. Go figure.

Another thing I like here is the language. Back east we may change a light bulb, or change the battery. But here you change out the light bulb and change out the battery. I like that. Also back east, we sometimes put things away. Here you put things up. You put up the rake, or put up the vacuum. I now try to put things up whenever I can.

One summer when I went east to visit my parents, my aunt came over for a barbecue. By the way, north easterners consider anything cooked over an open fire to be barbecue. Hamburgers, hot dogs, anything. I know, they’re ignorant. It’s not their fault.

Anyway, my aunt was helping out and asked where the trash barrel was. I told her “I drug it ‘round back.”

My well spoken aunt’s eyes got big and she looked at me as if I had passed gas in an elevator. She asked, in a rising voice, “You drug it ‘round back?”

What could I say? I’m a native Tulsan.

But sometimes I do feel the burden of being an outsider. Like the time my wife and I went to a Chinese restaurant. The hostess sized us up and asked, with a thick Asian accent, “You’re not from around here, are you?”

I figure if she could tell, everybody can. But they mostly don’t seem to mind.

NEWS FROM ALL OVER

Here in Tulsa, a man mugged three old ladies at knife point in one night.

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After each mugging, he would remove a piece of his clothing to throw off identification.

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By the time police caught him, he was down to his underwear.

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***

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The "Tulsa World" headline reads "Man Reportedly Attacks Roommate With Harmonica."

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What is not clear from the headline is whether the attacker or the attackee had the harmonica.

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I can understand attacking a man playing the harmonica if he's the bad kind of player who keeps playing the same two notes and won't stop.

.

But it turns out the attacker used a harmonica to to beat his roommate bloody. He is charged with assault with a dangerous weapon. A dangerous harmonica. Police took the weapon as evidence.

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A couple of middle-aged brothers in Delaware were arrested for running an identity fraud out of the mobile home where they lived with their mother.

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The two stole 44 Social Security numbers, used them to get 100 credit cards, and used the cards to steal $500,000.

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But you've got to ask: Why are two middle aged guys with a half million dollar paycheck living in a mobile home with their mother?

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***

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Remember that Kentucky pastor who invited his congregation to bring their guns to church? Well, he's quit his job at the New Bethel Church in Louisville. Ken Pagano says he was burned out on the ministry. Now he works at a shooting range.

Do what you love, and love what you do.

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SOUR GRAPES

President Barack Obama has won the Nobel Peace Prize. What do real Americans think?

"Something has happened here that we all agree with the Taliban and Iran about and that is he doesn't deserve the award." -- Rush Limbaugh

"Mikhail Gorbachev won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990. A year later, he was out of power and the Soviet Union had dissolved. I don't mean to compare Barack Obama to Gorbachev, who was, whatever his faults, a truly historic and courageous figure."
-- William Kristol

"I did not realize the Nobel Peace Prize had an affirmative action quota for it, but that is the only thing I can think of for this news." -- Erick Erickson

"After a number of years, the NFL renamed its Super Bowl trophy after its most fitting recipient — it's now called the Vince Lombardi Trophy. I'd like to see the Nobel Foundation follow suit. If today's headlines said, 'Barack Obama Wins Yasser Arafat Prize,' that would be perfect."
-- Andy McCarthy


"I guarantee that Marisa Tomei did more to win the Academy Award in My Cousin Vinny than Barack Obama has done to win the Nobel Prize." -- Joe Scarborough

"In awarding the Nobel Prize for Peace to Barack Obama, the Nobel commitee has made itself look ridiculous." -- Patrick Buchanan

"Obama's bankrupted the US economy and destroyed the morale of our military. No wonder he was awarded the Nobel." -- Gateway Pundit


"The Nobel Peace Prize should be turned down by Barack Obama and given -- you ready for this? Oh, this one's gonna make headlines -- should be given to the Tea Party goers and the 9-12 Project." -- Glenn Beck


"It’s the final nail in the Nobel Peace Prize Committee’s coffin." -- Michelle Malkin

"I am both surprised and deeply humbled. I do not view it as a recognition of my own accomplishments, but rather as an affirmation of American leadership...I will accept this award as a call to action." -- President Barack Obama

I KISS A DOG

Have you ever seen a kissing booth?

Me neither, except in mythology. You know, cartoons, drawings, photos and the like. At charity carnivals, people would line up to pay a dollar and get a kiss from a real live girl. Maybe these booths really existed at one time. It seems so unsanitary now.

But at Woodland Hills Mall the other day I saw a real live kissing booth.

It was for charity, one of the events at the mall for National Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

For only a dollar, people lined up to kiss… a dog.

Sparkle is a professional kissing dog. She belongs to Tulsa Boxer Rescue and travels for charity events with her own handler – Laura Morris – and her own Smooch-A-Pooch kissing booth.

Sparkle is well suited for the job. She’ll lick the face of anyone within reach, ready or not. Sparkle has taken her act to Petsmart, the zoo and the bowling alley. And business is good. Sparkle makes about $200 per event, $1000 a year. But she files no tax return because it’s all for charity.

Sparkle is a survivor. She was rescued from the Tulsa animal shelter, emaciated and infected with a tick borne disease. And she’s a breast cancer survivor; Sparkle has had a mastectomy.

What’s it like to kiss Sparkle? Shana Lamons was a customer. She’s also a breast cancer survivor. Sparkle kissed her from chin to eyeballs. She described the kiss as joyful and fabulous. Lamons says, “Dog kisses are good for the soul. Truly they are.”

There was nothing left but for me to experience it myself. So I put a dollar in the jar and puckered up. Sparkle attacked my face. Right on the lips. Lots of tongue. Very wet. It lasted a long time. One of us finally broke it off. I was completely satisfied.

Sparkle's take today went to a charity called Breast Impressions. They provide breast casting kits to women diagnosed with breast cancer. This allows the ladies to make plaster casts of their breasts as a memory of what they looked like pre-surgery.

This may sound bizarre. But the casts are variously decorated with sequins and fabric, paint and fake fur, and become a work of art suitable for hanging. In fact, Breast Impressions sells off some of the busts for pretty good prices and donates the money to local breast health programs.

And I’ve learned something about cancer. That is, how many cancer survivors there are. And I include myself. A cancer diagnosis was at one time a death sentence, but not any more. I think you’d be surprised to learn how many of us former cancer patients there are among you, leading normal healthy lives. Or as I sometimes tell people, “I’m fine now, but that was the worst case of cancer I ever had.”

NO FAIR FREAKS

The Tulsa State Fair is in town. Of course, Tulsa is not a state. There’s a reason it’s called the Tulsa State Fair. But I forget the reason.

Back when, fairs had real freak shows and girly shows. I remember seeing the tall man, fat lady, bearded hermaphrodite and a guy with three eyes and two noses. Only two of the eyes were functional. I don’t know about the noses.

It was at the Honesdale, Pennsylvania, county fair, in the strip tent, that I saw my first completely naked lady in person. Her name was Bubbles. She was not a pretty sight. Bubbles was overweight and unattractive. Still, there was a certain amount of clinical interest.

The Tulsa State Fair used to have girly shows. This is true, I looked it up.

But not anymore.

And freak shows? There it is, on the midway, a tent covered with posters promising, among other things, the world’s tallest girl, ugliest man, two headed calf, two headed baby, sruken (sic) head, Figi (sic) island mermaid, Siamese twins, and – be still, my heart -- a man with three eyes and two noses. All for an admission price of two dollars, so step right up.

Of course, I did. Here’s what I found.

The world’s tallest girl was a plaster statue.

The two headed baby was also made of plaster. The sign called it a facsimile, along with a warning to say “no” to drugs or your baby could look like this.

The two headed calf was a clever piece of taxidermy, as was the Turbalope: a combination turtle, rabbit and antelope.

The Figi island mermaid was something in a jar, looking like a pickled embryo. It was hard to tell what it was, let alone what it was made of.

The srunken head? It was there, looking just like the plastic ones we used to buy as kids. They were a big fad in the 50’s; don’t ask me why. Maybe this particular shrunken head was real, but by now I was pretty skeptical.

The Siamese twins were just an old newspaper photo, as was the world’s ugliest man.

And the two-nosed, three eyed man was nowhere to be found.

***

Elsewhere at the fair, the people-watching was as great as ever. Yes, many of us go to the fair to look at each other. And that’s a good thing. Because to each other, most of us look pretty funny.

Beyond that, there is plenty of music, cooking demonstrations, and rides to lose your corn dogs on.

One exhibit I couldn’t find this year was the world’s largest pig. In years past, he was usually set up across the walk from a pork barbeque booth. And I always wondered: Does the world’s largest pig smell the barbeque? Does it make him hungry? And does he know it’s a pig?