SPITBULL

1. Write your cover letter by hand on college-ruled paper with a blue Bic pen.

2. Use the word "pimp" at least one time on your resume.

3. When the recruiter calls you for an interview, forget that you even applied for the job.

4. Use an email address on your resume that includes the word "sexy" (e.g. lilsexymomma@yahoo.com, 2sexy4u@hotmail.com).

5. Make sure the outgoing voicemail message the recruiter hears includes music and the phrase "shake that (insert Biblical word for donkey)."

By their own description, 72 percent of those teaching at American universities and colleges are liberal and 15 percent are conservative ...

The disparity is even more pronounced at the most elite schools, where, according to the study, 87 percent of faculty are liberal and 13 percent are conservative.

Octopuses, known for using camouflage to avoid predators, have been observed apparently trying to sneak away by walking on two arms while pretending to be a bunch of algae.

... others appear to be willing accomplices, consciously or unconsciously biased toward praising films because of the potential for career advancement, as Net-Monster notes: "Let's face it, the only way out of obscurity is to get your name seen by as many people as possible, and if you're Edgar Gnurdstone of WLSR in Kalamazoo Falls, a good way to achieve this is to write a glowing review of a movie you've seen. Better yet, write glowing reviews of absolutely awful films, and you increase your chances further since there won't be many good reviews for the ads to choose from."

"Practically speaking, it makes little sense for Al Jazeera to list their shares in the U.S.," said Paul Kim, media analyst for Traditional Asiel Securities. "They would have a broader audience in Europe" where there is "probably less of a bias."

Thomas the Tank Engine was invented by the Reverend W. Audry, a British minister, to amuse his son. The series shows every sign of having been invented by someone who believes in a vengeful God. It details the adventures of a bunch of intelligent (sort of) trains, who drag shit around under the harsh direction of Sir Topham Hatt, their master and overlord.

My favorite thing about the series, when I can stand to watch it, is the way the trains are cruelly punished for their transgressions. At the beginning of one episode, three trains are being released from the sheds, where Sir Topham Hatt has locked them for several days for misbehaving. The depiction of a world where the naughty can be punished with several days in the closet makes this series pure porn for parents.

Also, the series has an amusing, retro attitude towards the ladies. Female trains are generally crabby, annoying, and dragged around by the boy trains, who are the active ones who have all the adventures. It’s sort of like Harry Potter, but with trains.

At the heart of it, though, despite all of its supposed good intentions, PBS or not, Thomas the Tank Engine is a marketing vehicle. It’s Pokemon for two year-olds. It has dozens of characters: trains, helicopters, busses, other trains, and you can buy all of them. And you will. Thomas got my innocent little girl to start asking for stuff all the time. “Daddy, buy me Thomas a little, please?” Thanks, PBS!

The days of bartering are back at a Charlottetown car dealership. It is giving farmers a chance to trade in a cow on the purchase of a vehicle. Walter Piccott Chev Olds in Charlottetown will take up to dozen cattle under the program. It is offering farmers up to $1,000 for their cattle.

[T]he logical conclusion of most strong password policies ... is that passwords should be impossible to remember and should never be written down.

Somehow, the world's ATM banking systems have managed to get by with a bare minimum of fraud for more than 20 years by relying upon only four-digit codes. So what do the banking geeks grasp about password management?

The obvious answer: the stronger and more complex the password scheme, the lazier and more technically incompetent the security system administrator.

The annual report by a press watchdog that is affiliated with Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism said that 36 percent of stories about Bush were negative compared to 12 percent about Kerry, a Massachusetts senator.

We learned ... that the mainstream media, over the course of the last year, did a pretty good job of discerning. But there's a subculture and a sub-media that talks and keeps things going for entertainment purposes rather than for the flow of information. And that has a profound impact and undermines what we call the mainstream media of the country. And so the decision-making ability of the American electorate has been profoundly impacted as a consequence of that. The question is, what are we going to do about it?"

We heard these rasping noises, which sound like high pitched raspberries, only ever at night, whenever we saw tiny gas bubbles coming from the herrings' bottoms.

The list of recommended titles includes such literary classics as Don Quixote, The Labyrinth of Solitude by Octavio Paz, and, on a lighter note, The Little Prince.

One hindrance is that a substantial proportion of the police are semi-literate.

About 20% were not educated beyond primary level.

However, according to the mayor, classes will be given to those with reading difficulties.

There is no chance of anyone getting away without doing the reading.

The policemen will be regularly tested to make sure they have read the books they name.

Tea

Brew the tea. Find it two hours later, cold. Add sugar, microwave. Remember it two hours later, cold. Microwave again. Repeat until time to go home. Return to work, wash cup, try again. Repeat as necessary.

Coffee

Buy a plane ticket to anywhere in Italy. Get off the plane, get a coffee anywhere you land, even in the airport.

The uncharitable explanation — monkey see, monkey scribble — has as usual a good deal in it. Thompson is a topic, Miller is a topic, and we are perennially starved for topics: such is the vital function of the newspaper. But there is something even more unpleasant at work — a ghoulish, misbegotten sense of duty, as if failing to note their passing means that our own will also go unremarked. Well, it will. Not to worry.

Well another one bites the dust. Have fun Tom being a reactionary fascist you dirty bush-sucking bitch. The Dems don't need traitors like you anyway.

So, as a Democrat, I'm wondering: What do we do if President Bush was right? What do we do if the Mideastern dominoes start falling and President Bush goes down in history as Winston Churchill, while we go down as Neville Chamberlain, howling weakly that diplomacy works and military force is no longer necessary? What if our most conservative President goes down in history as a great contributor to the liberal ideals of freedom and tolerance, while we Democrats -- we liberals -- go down as cold-hearted and fearful, unconcerned about the suffering of our fellows while we sit contentedly in our affluence?

If that happens, are we even liberals any more?

• The New York Times:

  The Bush administration is entitled to claim a healthy share of the credit for many of these advances. It boldly proclaimed the cause of Middle East democracy at a time when few in the West thought it had any realistic chance. And for all the negative consequences that flowed from the American invasion of Iraq, there could have been no democratic elections there this January if Saddam Hussein had still been in power.

• The Guardian:

  First ... we should be big enough to concede that it [the Iraq war] could yet have at least one good outcome.

  Second, we have to say that the call for freedom throughout the Arab and Muslim world is a sound and just one - even if it is a Bush slogan and arguably code for the installation of malleable regimes. Put starkly, we cannot let ourselves fall into the trap of opposing democracy in the Middle East simply because Bush and Blair are calling for it. Sometimes your enemy's enemy is not your friend.

• The Daily Show's Jon Stewart:

  He's gonna be a great--pretty soon, Republicans are gonna be like, "Reagan was nothing compared to this guy." Like, my kid's gonna go to a high school named after him, I just know it.
  
  ***
  
  ... this is--this is the most difficult thing for me to--because, I think, I don't care for the tactics, I don't care for this, the weird arrogance, the setting up. But I gotta say, I haven't seen results like this ever in that region.