Stevieslaw: Will Republicans Surrender Another Minority?

Posted on January 7, 2015 by stevieslaw

Although Cousin Myron has not yet formally announced his candidacy, Stevieslaw has learned that the Koch brother sponsored American Crossroads is planning to air several 30 second slots this spring in an attempt to upend the campaign of Cousin Myron, “early in the game.”  Spokeswoman, Betry T. Ur, said that Crossroads would portray Cousin Myron as “the flaming, red-haired radical that he is.”  She noted that the National Rifle Association is considering offering negative ratings just to cover the case of Cousin Myron and that Myron has repeatedly called climate change skeptics, “dumb-asses.”

The American Red-Headed League, named for the Sherlock Holmes short story by Arthur Conan Doyle, shot back immediately, through spokesperson Anne Ginger, She said,  “Two to six percent of Americans are red-headed. We have the largest number of red-heads in the world. Expressions like, “flaming red-headed radical” are sure to convince people of red-hair color not to vote for Republicans.”  “My god,” she concluded, “They’ve already given away the black and Hispanic vote, how can they afford to toss away the red-headed vote as well?”

Posted in gang gang dance, Humor, parody, sleepless in state college | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Stevieslaw: Is He Running?

Posted on January 7, 2015 by stevieslaw

image

Cousin Myron after an interview with Kim Jong-un

In a Stevieslaw exclusive, we have learned that Cousin Myron has resigned from all of his board positions. These include the Presidencies of the Pitkin Avenue Merchants Association, The Brownsville Boys Club, and the Sutter Avenue Bowling League.   As you may recall, Myron, the red-headed idiot savant with a penchant for mathematics, made a very, very large amount of money by using a progressive betting scheme at several local race-tracks.  MSNBC, Fox News, and CNN will pose the question of Myron’s presidential candidacy, again and again and again, over the next few days.  CNN spokesperson, Natta Clew, confirmed that Myron was of interest as: “He has the resources, the terribly strong opinions, and the lack of experience needed for the race.”

Smokey Diamond, our long suffering reporter, put in a call this morning to Myron’s long-time spokeswoman and wife, Marsha, but she would only say, in conformity to her long standing policy, “pppffffffttttttttt.”

Posted in gang gang dance, Humor, parody, sleepless in state college | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Smokey Diamond: Ace Reporter-home for Christmas?

Posted on January 4, 2015 by stevieslaw

image

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Stevieslaw: The Obama Ratio

Posted on January 1, 2015 by stevieslaw

Max Boot, senior fellow at the Council of Foreign Affairs, argues today that once Americans are sent to fight a war overseas, they must stay until the enemy says “uncle.” Max makes no distinction between, say, World War II and the shadowy civil wars we have been fighting since—those wars, like Vietnam, in which the people we are fighting live there and we don’t. How would that even apply in a place like Pakghanistan?

But the conclusion we draw here is based less on what Max says and more on how Max says it. To do this, we introduce a new principle for judging the true subject of any article—The Obama Ratio: no article, short of biography, can use “Obama” for more than 0.5% of its words and still claim to be about something other than Obama. Max Boot uses “Obama” nine times in a roughly 800 word piece, an Obama ratio of greater than 1%, which leads us to believe, that in spite of the title, his piece is not about the Afghan war at all.

Posted in gang gang dance, Humor, parody, sleepless in state college | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Stevieslaw: Fox News to Add Weather Report

Posted on December 31, 2014 by stevieslaw

Imno S. Citist, spokesperson for Fox News, told Smokey Diamond today that Fox will be adding a weather report starting on the first of the year. Imno said “we will dedicate five minutes from every news hour to the weather, in an effort to balance the reports given by the liberal media.” The public needs to know that the ultra-liberals are basing their reports and forecasts on unproven, pseudo-scientific instruments like thermometers, wind anemometers, and rain gauges.”
“At Fox,” noted Dr. Citist, the reported temperatures will be 10 degrees cooler, the storms will be less frequent and much milder, and those storms will cause no property damage or injury to humans.” “Fair and balanced,” he concluded with a smile.

Posted in gang gang dance, Humor, parody, sleepless in state college | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Stevieslaw: The Story of the Year

Posted on December 31, 2014 by stevieslaw

Smokey Diamond was hard at work by the time I strolled into the offices of Stevieslaw this morning. As usual, she had settled on the only patch of sunshine in our basement rooms as a place to compose her stories. Smokey has decided to write a piece on the story of the year, on the last day of the year. She hopes to continue doing this for years to come. I could tell she was hard at it, as the floor was littered with what seemed like hundreds of pages of old newsprint and the room smelled of herring chips—her favorite working snack.
“There are dozens of the usual stories,” she mumbled “The wars, the terrorist attacks, the politicians, and the disasters. If you interchange the names—Iraq for Afghanistan, Isis for Al Qaeda, the stories all sound alike.”
“How about the mid-term elections,” I suggested. “It’s not often people vote for the folks that actively hate them.” “More and more,” she replied. “Also, our readership is a bit larger than the number of people who voted this year.”
“I thought about choosing the recent CDT piece in which they described the several hundred law suits that surround the Sandusky mess,” she opined. “But that’s really most effective as a sleep aid.” “Yes,” I added, “and after reading that piece I found it hard to believe that the bad guy is already in jail.”
There’s always Penn State football,” I said and we both laughed.
In the end, Smokey went with a “human” interest story. She felt that in a world where most social discourse is now prefaced with “you’re a moron,” a feel good story was just what the doctor ordered.
So without further ado, Smokey’s story of the year is “Cat sold in mattress is home,” by Steven DuBois of the Associated Press. The story, which she found in the CDT of December 30th, describes the travails of Camo the Oregon cat who went missing for ten days after the mattress and box spring were sold with him in it. Strangers and friends helped find the cat, who was lured home by sardines in oil and the scent of familiar clothing.
We should all be so lucky in finding our way home.

Posted in gang gang dance, Humor, parody, sleepless in state college | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Stevieslaw: The gift that will keep giving

Posted on December 29, 2014 by stevieslaw

Stevieslaw: The gift that will keep giving.

Marc Levy, writing for the Associated Press, discussed the growing disparity between what wealthy and poor districts spend to educate children in Pennsylvania. He noted that this “funding gap” has more than doubled during Tom Corbett’s four years in office. He writes that, “districts in the top 20 percent of average resident income are budgeted to spend slightly more than $4000 more per student this year than the poorest 20% of districts.” Levy ties this to State funding cuts in education, which have left districts scrambling to make up budget shortfalls by tapping into the local tax-base. This gives wealthier districts a decided advantage.
Smokey Diamond, our intrepid reporter, was able to use the halftime break in the Tinactin-Foot Fungus bowl in Topeka (Go Whales!) to put in a call to Tom Corbett’s Secretary of Education to ask about the report. Spokesperson, Tuan Too, fielded the call.
“Of course we knew that cutting unnecessary educational spending would widen the gap between rich and poor districts,” Too stated. “We needed to move education forward while providing fewer resources and to do so we had to develop a rationale for how money would be allocated.”
“We used a common sense approach,” Tuan continued. “You and I are both aware that poor folk are able to do a lot with a little. It is a life skill they have somehow acquired. Why some of my poorest friends seem to make do with nothing at all. Rich people are not similarly equipped and would not react to shortages nearly as well. With that in mind, it was clear that an across the board spending cut in education, which would provide the poor with the less they need to thrive, was the fairest approach.”
Case closed.
And we are also happy to report that The Topeka Teachers College Whales went on to drown the East Omaha State Flounders, 36-3, in just under four and a half hours of rough and tumble football.

Posted in gang gang dance, Humor, parody, sleepless in state college | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Stevieslaw: The Virtue of Selfishness

Posted on December 24, 2014 by stevieslaw

I mentioned once before that our local newspaper, The Centre Daily Times, has moved significantly to the right, what with headlines that might have been written by Rush Limbaugh and the occasional piece by say, the spokesperson for the “Banking Overlords”, that appears in the news rather than the opinion section, but I will admit that I was surprised to see an op-ed piece by Peter Schwartz—an Objectivist philosopher, appear a few days before Christmas. Objectivists are followers of Ayn Rand, the author of several long-winded novels (Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead) and her anthem, “The Virtue of Selfishness.” What bothered me is not that our country, in which the divide between the have and have-nots is rising faster than the ocean temperatures, may have already overdosed on selfishness, it’s that this philosophy is so bizarrely anti-Christmas that if one of its followers had penned A Christmas Carol, the climax of the novel would have the ghosts of Christmas present, past and future apologizing to Scrooge.
Of course, objectivists are not talking just selfishness, but rather a rational selfishness, where if you do what’s in your self-interest, you will also be doing best for the whole world (it trickles down). Every time I think of rational self-interest as an operating principle in this country, I come up with a picture of a bunch of football fans in Green Bay. It’s -13 degrees and they have doffed their shirts so they can spell out Packers on bare skin for the television cameras. And although Rand would claim that no two rational beings could ever bump heads in selfishness, my older brother would often show me, in painful detail, the error of that kind of thinking.

In any event, Ayn Rand is back. Her philosophy is practiced by many of our elected officials. Now, The Ayn Rand Institute has recognized that a major difficulty in practicing Objectivism is the inability of many people to recognize what will best promote their rational self-interest. What people need is a cognitive “crystal ball.” In response, The Institute has constructed an I-device ready application, entitled “What would Ayn do?” Download it today. It will make you feel so much better about stiffing the paperboy on Christmas Day.

Posted in gang gang dance, Humor, parody, sleepless in state college | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Stevieslaw: TH Today-Spontaneous Combustion

Posted on December 19, 2014 by stevieslaw

The New York City Police and Fire Departments have ruled out arson as the cause of the fire that leveled Fox News Headquarters on the Avenue of Americas today. No one was hurt in the incident. Fire Department spokesperson, Gladys T. Metcha, said, “We have long been aware of the high concentration of poisonous and flammable gas in the building. That and the President’s recent decisions on immigration and Cuba were apparently enough to promote a “spontaneous combustion event.”

Liberal groups have denied tweeting the story under the headline of, “Another Christmas Miracle.”

Posted in gang gang dance, Humor, parody, sleepless in state college | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Stevieslaw: My Fragile Condition

Posted on December 19, 2014 by stevieslaw

My Fragile Condition

In my glory days,
I’d get rejections
from all the best journals.
Once or twice there was
even a penned note
from some assistant
to the assistant editor,
hinting at how close
I had nearly come.

These days, I am rejected
by the mundane
poem-shops I have hardly
the heart to apply to.
Soon, if I am not rescued
by approval, I fear
I will be penning rhymes
for Reader’s Digest1.

My fragility is nearly
palpable–it’s as if
my soul had developed
an interesting limp.
What is worse, I am ingesting
large quantities of adjectives,
which, like oversalted chips,
I must wash down
with gallons of poorly chosen verbs.

Perhaps,
(as we fragile souls will reason)
some regal poetry person
will refind my scribblings
at posterity, declare my
line breaks minor brilliance,
and calligraphate my name
upon a slim volume
of the best of my best.
Ah, such sweet success.

More likely,
in the library of my future,
I will occupy a kilobyte or two
between the megabytive writings
of Emily Dickinson and T.S. Eliot,
and be pulled up, if at all,
by the occasional errant keystroke.

1.Reader’s Digest does not accept poetry.

Posted in gang gang dance, Humor, parody, poetry, sleepless in state college | Tagged , | Leave a comment