Memories Lost to a Whirlwind Alight on Facebook to Be Claimed

Luke Sharrett for The New York Times

The found photographs are on a Facebook page titled “Pictures and Documents found after the April 27, 2011 Tornadoes.” 

Like hundreds of others finding keepsakes that fell from the sky and posting photographs of them on a Facebook lost and found, the woman included her e-mail address, and Ms. Washburn wrote immediately: “That man is my granddaddy. It would mean a lot to me to have that picture.”
Created by Patty Bullion, 37, of Lester, Ala., a page on the social networking site has so far reunited dozens of storm survivors with their prized — and in some cases, only — possessions: a high school diploma that landed in a Lester front yard was traced to its owner in Tupelo, Miss., for example. A woman who lost her home in the tiny town of Phil Campbell, Ala., claimed her homemade quilt found in Athens, Ala., nearly 50 miles away: “Phil Campbell Class of 2000,” it read.
But the page is also turning social networking software designed to help friends stay in touch into an unexpected meeting ground for strangers. Along with the photographs of found items are the comments of well-wishers and homespun detectives speculating as to the identities of their owners. For those spared by the storms that killed hundreds in the South, the page is a bridge to its victims, a way to offer solace and to share in their suffering.
“Is she okay?” wrote one commenter on a snapshot of a red-haired child at a swimming pool. “I see her face throughout the day, and wonder.”
The tornado did not touch down in Lester. But when Ms. Bullion ventured into her yard on Wednesday afternoon, she found it littered with other people’s memories that the storm had disgorged in passing. One document, lying face down on the wet pavement, was a sonogram, just like those she had saved from her own pregnancies. “I would want that back,” she said.
Ms. Bullion already had her own Facebook page with a few hundred friends, but the chances of any of them knowing the people whose items she had found were slim, she thought. So she created a new page with a title that described precisely what she hoped it would contain: “Pictures and Documents found after the April 27, 2011 Tornadoes.” She asked her friends to post a link to it on their own pages.
“I feel like I know these people,” Ms. Bullion said. “They could so easily have been us.”
The first of the images that Ms. Bullion had posted was identified a few hours later by the sister of two children shown in a black-and-white photograph. They were from Hackleburg, Ala., the sister wrote in the comments section, a town almost 100 miles away: Ms. Bullion’s husband, a forest ranger, looked it up on a map.
By Friday evening, more than 52,000 people had clicked the “like” button on the page, and more than 600 pictures had been posted: an unopened letter, a death certificate and scores of photographs. Some of the items were unscathed. Some were carefully pieced together by their finder. Some, like mortgage statements and canceled checks, evoked calls to be sure to block out account numbers and personal financial information.
One water-damaged picture of a chubby-cheeked toddler elicited over two dozen comments, its rips and smudges an unavoidable metaphor for what people feared had happened to the child. “This breaks my heart,” wrote one commenter. A digitally restored version someone posted yielded approving comments, almost as though saving the picture could ensure the child’s safety.
Laura Mashburn saw some sign of providence in the fact that Hannah Wilson, the young woman whose photo she had found on her doorstep in Lester, turned out to work in a dentist’s office, just as she once had.
The woman’s co-workers saw the image of what looked to be her old prom picture on the page and supplied her name and address. Her mother, someone else volunteered, had a heart attack during the storm. “I saw Hannah yesterday,” wrote another friend, “and she is grateful to you for getting this back to her.”
Laura Monks, the director of a community college in Fayetteville, Tenn., who had found the picture of Ms. Washburn’s grandfather, Elvin Patterson, and his dog Yoyo, said she would return it right away.
“My great-grandfather’s name was Elvin also,” she wrote to Ms. Washburn in an e-mail. “Is there anything that I can do for your family or your community?”
Ms. Washburn, 31, whose maternal grandmother also died in the storm, said in an interview on Friday that she would frame the photograph. Then she said, her voice breaking, “I’ll probably give it to my mom.”

As the Careless Order a Latte, Thieves Grab Something to Go

Distraction and extraction. These are the skills, timeless, of thousands of thieves who work in New York, without a weapon and without attracting notice.

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Tony Cenicola/The New York Times

Where in the city can such a thief visit dozens of happy hunting spots on an afternoon’s walk, finding rooms crowded with people staring at laptops or iPads, or texting or talking on phones, and ignoring their purses? A place so comfortable and familiar, with its jazz, leather chairs and Wi-Fi, that customers, otherwise savvy to the city’s dangers, do not think twice about saving a round blond-wood table with a bag or a laptop while they stand in line?
You may be there now, with a grande caffè mocha.
Starbucks shops are ubiquitous in New York, a respite for tourists and professionals young and old, and while the city’s criminal trends come and go and ebb and flow, there remains a steady march of handbags from those shops in someone else’s hands.
From Times Square to the Village to Brooklyn Heights, Starbucks pops up again and again on police blotters. Officers have set up stings in the chain’s stores. A commander even asked one branch to put up a sign warning customers; the manager demurred, saying such a sign required corporate approval.
No doubt such a sign would dampen the mood.
“You can let your guard down — people are sitting down and talking and using their laptops,” said Capt. Mark DiPaolo of the 84th Precinct in Brooklyn Heights, home to a Court Street Starbucks that has been the scene of four bag thefts this year. “It is a comfort zone that people have.”
Another commanding officer said people who left laptops behind to use the restroom should not be surprised to return to an empty table.
Not to pick on the chain, based in Seattle. No one has tallied the number of Starbucks thefts, and purses and bags walk out of any number of restaurants and bars day and night. Grand larcenies — the theft of anything over $1,000, which is almost every purse with a credit card inside — remain the Police Department’s most vexing crime, as preventable as it is commonplace.
“I think it’s great people are so comfortable with New York City,” said Lt. Dan Hollywood, who is on the Grand Larceny Task Force in the Manhattan South precincts. “But we’ve turned it around enough; maybe they’re not quite as raised up as they used to be.”
The phenomenon, like the chain , is familiar outside of New York. There have been reports in the news media of thefts in Starbucks in places like Hoboken, N.J.; Birmingham, Mich.; Berkeley, Calif.; and Toronto. The wife of the chairman of the Federal Reserve had her purse stolen from a Starbucks in the District of Columbia and became a victim of an identity-theft scheme.
Lieutenant Hollywood and other officers say one reason Starbucks is frequently the scene of thefts is because there are so many of the shops in the city: 298 and counting.
A sampling: A woman sat down around 4 p.m. on the afternoon of Feb. 12 on a bench in the Starbucks on Spring and Crosby Streets in SoHo, setting her purse beside her while she used her laptop. She turned around — no more purse. She described to the police a man who had been sitting nearby, but security video was no help. She has yet to recover a Marc Jacobs wallet and its contents, including a ring and necklace together worth $1,200.
At the same Starbucks a month later, a woman sat with her father, looking at a map, her purse on another chair with a coat on top. The police officer who took her complaint later sheepishly admitted, “I do that all the time.” Someone took the purse with the wallet, credit cards and BlackBerry inside. To add insult to injury, a man approached later and said he had seen the whole thing. Then a woman walked up and said the same. Neither had spoken up during the theft.
Another month passed, and a woman hung her pocketbook on a hook on the wall and went to order what turned out to be a most expensive cup of coffee.
Starbucks replied to questions about thefts with an e-mail from corporate headquarters: “Customers should always be aware of their surroundings when in public places, whether at one of our stores or elsewhere.”
Lieutenant Hollywood, anonymous in plain clothes, walked into a Starbucks in Times Square this week and pointed. “See that bag by the newspapers?” he asked, rolling his eyes. At another Starbucks on West 41st Street, he was surprised to recognize a woman he had arrested for shoplifting a few years ago, so he took a seat and watched her. She left empty-handed.
His task force arrested about 200 suspects in grand larcenies witnessed by officers last year. One of the arrestees, a 50-year-old man, sat near a woman in a Starbucks on Union Square West and took her purse in July, the police said.
In February last year, the team arrested a 53-year-old parolee when officers saw him grab a police “decoy bag” in a Starbucks on Fifth Avenue. Two blocks away, in 2009, the police said, a 46-year-old man snatched an unattended laptop off a table.
A good thief can sit back-to-back to a mark and empty a purse hanging on the chair between them.
Lieutenant Hollywood stood in the center of a Starbucks on West 47th Street, glancing about the room, when a man approached and said, “You in line?”
No. “I’m not a coffee guy.”

A Traditional Royal Wedding, but for the 3 Billion Witnesses

James Hill for The New York Times

Roaring crowds (and a scowling bridesmaid) greeted Prince William and Kate Middleton for their kiss on the balcony of Buckingham Palace on Friday. More Photos »

LONDON — In the end, Friday’s wedding between Prince William and Kate Middleton may not have ushered in a new dawn for the frayed royal family or brought a renewed era of optimism to a country beset by financial woes, as some predicted in the overheated countdown to the big day. But it proved that the British still know how to combine pageantry, solemnity and romance (and wild hats) better than anyone else in the world.

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The couple now known as the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge left Buckingham Palace on Friday in an Aston Martin Volante. More Photos »

It was an impeccably choreographed occasion of high pomp and heartfelt emotion, of ancient customs tweaked by modern developments (Elton John brought his husband).
Viewing estimates for the ceremony, at 11 a.m. British time on the dot, hovered in the three billion range, give or take 500 million. Australians held bouquet-throwing competitions; people in Hong Kong wore Kate and William masks; New Yorkers rose by dawn to watch the entrance of guests like Victoria Beckham, teetering pregnantly in sky-high Christian Louboutin heels, Guy Ritchie, the former Mr. Madonna, and assorted monarchs from European countries that are no longer monarchies, like Bulgaria.
In London, the Metropolitan Police said, a million people lined the route of the royal procession, and half a million gathered in front of Buckingham Palace to watch the bride and groom, now known as the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, kiss (twice) on the palace balcony.
People paid attention almost despite themselves.
“I never really think too seriously about them,” said Kathy Gunn, 54, speaking of the royal family. Yet she had somehow been inexorably sucked into the spirit of the occasion, watching it unfold with a crowd on a huge screen at a cafe in central London. “It gives you a great sense of community and spirit,” she said. “I am a royalist for the day.”
In a world of scattered attention, the occasion had the effect of providing a single international conversation about a subject with universal appeal. It was like a party scene in “Dallas,” only with Prince Philip instead of J. R. Ewing.
Grizzled political correspondents, hauled in to television studios to serve as wedding anchors, found themselves talking in all seriousness about the passementerie of the mother of the bride’s dress and the provenance of Miss Middleton’s tiara. (She borrowed it from Queen Elizabeth, in case you were wondering. It is made of a great many diamonds.)
There was a feast of interesting particulars. First, Kate’s dress. Though The Daily Mail successfully predicted the name of the designer — Sarah Burton at Alexander McQueen — it was still an official secret, so much so that Ms. Burton tried to sneak into Kate’s hotel on Thursday night with her face mostly obscured by a huge yeti-like fur hat.
St. James’s Palace released the details of the dress just as Miss Middleton stepped out of a royal Rolls-Royce with her father, Michael, to walk down the aisle at Westminster Abbey.
Her “something old” was the design of the dress, using traditional craftsmanship. “Something new” was represented by her earrings, a gift from her parents. The tiara was borrowed, and she had a blue ribbon sewn into her dress for her blue item.
Prince William wore the bright scarlet coat of an Irish Guards mounted officer, the uniform of his senior honorary army appointment. He was wearing “gold sword slings,” St. James’s Palace said, but no sword.
The outfits of the guests were generally tasteful and royal-friendly. A few things stuck out. The exotic costumes of foreign dignitaries, seeming throwbacks to imperial times. The hats worn by the ladies, which resembled, variously, overturned buckets, flowerpots, lampshades, fezzes, salad plates, tea cozies, flying saucers, abstract artworks or, in one case, a pile of feathers. There were also a number of fascinators, decorative shapes with flowers or feathers, that are stuck in one’s hair but are not hats.
Catty observers pointed out that Prime Minister David Cameron’s wife, Samantha, was possibly the only female guest who wore no hat (or fascinator) at all.
Mr. Cameron wore a traditional morning suit. The dress code had filled him with angst this month when news broke out that in order to avoid appearing too posh, he intended to wear a regular business suit, what the British call a “lounge suit.” But as scorn poured upon him — he is in fact posh and frequently wears posh clothes — he said that he would wear a morning suit after all.
Some questions were also raised about the guest list. John Major and Margaret Thatcher, former Conservative prime ministers, were invited; Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, former Labour prime ministers, were not. (Mr. Major attended; Lady Thatcher was ill and stayed home.) The Syrian ambassador was invited, and then uninvited. Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, was never invited.
The new duchess, of course, has parents who made their own fortune with an Internet party-accouterments business. Even a generation ago, she would have been considered unthinkable as a prospective royal bride.
The country’s merciless news media have been watching hopefully, and mostly fruitlessly, for signs of middle-class behavior from the Middletons. One TV commentator, standing outside the Goring Hotel, which the Middletons rented for the night before the wedding, remarked, “It’s sometimes hard to tell who are Middletons and who are staff.”
But except for having no titles, no inherited tiaras and no military uniforms, the Middletons were indistinguishable from the guests at the wedding. The bride’s mother, Carole, wore a lovely outfit by Catherine Walker, an aristocrat-approved designer; she did not chew gum, as she was said to have done once when she appeared in public at a royal event, or exhibit déclassé tendencies of any kind.
Kate’s elevation, such as it is, to royalty adds a special frisson to the story of her romance with William. The world knows that there are often no fairy-tale endings to these made-for-television moments — the collapse of the marriage of William’s parents being the most obvious example. But this couple seems to be a real one, with the potential to resuscitate the image of a royal family tarnished by misadventures like the antics of Prince Harry and Prince Andrew, and resentment over privilege and expenditures.
Kate, who promised to love William but not to obey him, is not actually a princess yet (if she were, she would be called Princess William, which is perhaps not a dream title). But she seems already at ease in what will now be a lifetime job, one with a heavy burden of responsibility as well as great privilege. As the couple drove in their horse-drawn carriage from the church to Buckingham Palace, she waved like a pro — from the wrist, the royal way.

Ravi Somaiya contributed reporting.

Groups Form to Aid Democrats With Anonymous Money

MANCHESTER, N.H. — A group including former White House officials, union leaders and one of Hollywood’s biggest producers have joined forces to start an outside effort to help President Obama and Congressional Democrats in 2012 by using the very sort of anonymous, unlimited donations from moneyed interests that the president has so deplored.

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Luke Sharrett/The New York Times

Bill Burton a former White House deputy press secretary, is a founder of the new groups established to aid Democrats in 2012.

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The Hollywood producer Jeffrey Katzenberg is also a co-founder of the new aid groups.

Co-founded by the former White House deputy press secretary Bill Burton and with seed money from the Service Employees International Union and the film producer Jeffrey Katzenberg, the group’s entrée into the early 2012 contest all but ensures that the presidential race will be awash in cash from undisclosed corporate and labor sources with huge stakes in Washington policy making.
At the heart of the effort, introduced Friday morning, are two groups: Priorities USA Action, which will engage directly in electioneering backed by donors who will have to be identified but can give unlimited amounts, and Priorities USA, which will advertise about related campaign issues using money from undisclosed sources.
The effort is modeled on the one Republicans started last year — with help from the Republican strategist Karl Rove — that attacked Democrats with a barrage of advertisements, mailings and phone calls. It was widely credited with helping the party to take control of the House and diminish the Democrats’ edge in the Senate last fall. One of those groups, Crossroads GPS, was set up under a section of the tax code that allowed its donors to remain anonymous, leading Mr. Obama to refer to such groups collectively as “a threat to democracy” for the way they had shielded corporate interests from view as they sought to sway elections.
Democrats had eschewed the formation of such groups last year at Mr. Obama’s public urging, but after the elections in November prominent liberals vowed to form with outside groups of their own to combat the likes of Crossroads.
Speaking aboard Air Force One on Friday, the White House press secretary, Jay Carney, said that the president’s views had not changed and that the administration had nothing to do with the new groups.
“We don’t control outside groups,” Mr. Carney said. “These are not people working for the administration.”
The Priorities USA organizers said they hoped to raise enough money to keep pace with the Crossroads groups, which have set a goal of raising $120 million for the 2012 election cycle.
The organizers said they would coordinate their efforts with a series of other liberal groups that have formed in recent months to bolster Democrats and Mr. Obama and attack Republicans and conservatives, much the way the Crossroads groups have coordinated with like-minded organizations against Democrats.
The announcement brought immediate criticism from groups calling for tighter campaign finance restrictions, and broader adherence to existing law, that Democrats were now getting into the act themselves.
Former Senator Russ Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin and a co-sponsor of the landmark legislation of 2002 that had placed tight restrictions on corporate giving but has since been chipped away by court rulings, said in a statement that efforts to imitate the “right-wing tactics” of Mr. Rove and others “do our nation no favors.”
Fred Wertheimer, president of the group Democracy 21, said his group was looking into filing a complaint with the Internal Revenue Service questioning the tax status of Priorities USA, saying that he was skeptical that it was serving anything other than a political purpose intended to influence the upcoming election. (The section of the tax code it was formed under — 501(c) (4) — is for groups that are not seeking to directly affect elections). He has registered a similar complaint against Crossroads GPS.
Mr. Wertheimer predicted that the 2012 campaign would have more anonymously donated money working for or against the election of federal candidates than any other has since the Watergate scandal kicked off the decades-long effort to reform the system — unless, he said, new legislative steps are taken to force greater transparency (an unlikely seeming eventuality for now given that both parties are getting so deeply involved in soliciting secret money).
Republicans seized on the formation of the group and its connections to the White House via Mr. Burton and the other co-founder of the groups, Sean Sweeney, a onetime deputy to the former White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, as an example of hypocrisy.
Crossroads GPS publicized Mr. Obama’s remarks in Philadelphia in October questioning anonymous donations that were spent in the service of Republicans. “The American people deserve to know who’s trying to sway their elections, and you can’t stand by and let the special interests drown out the voices of the American people,” Mr. Obama said then.
An aide to the Senate minority leader, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, sent an e-mail quoting Mr. Burton as saying last year, “The president thinks that if you’re going to participate in politics, you ought to be transparent about it.”
Coordination between outside groups and federal candidates is strictly prohibited, if hard to prove and harder still to enforce.
Asked if he had any contact with the White House on the formation of the groups, Mr. Burton said in an e-mail, “We will be clear that we cannot coordinate with anyone at the White House or on the campaign.”
Asked if the issue had come up during his time at the White House, Mr. Burton said, “Outside groups were obviously a topic of conversation” there, but “We decided to do this on our own, after we left the White House and spent a considerable amount of time thinking about it.”
He said the groups were planned strictly as a reaction to the formation of groups by Mr. Rove and the Koch family, among others, adding, “We don’t think progressives should live by a different set of rules than conservatives.”
Advisers to the groups include Harold Ickes, a former Clinton White House deputy chief of staff; Ellen Malcolm, founder of Emily’s List, which supports candidates favoring abortion rights; and Robert McKay, chairman of Democracy Alliance, which took a leading role in organizing liberal groups.

U.S. Moves Cautiously Against Syrian Leaders

WASHINGTON — A brutal Arab dictator with a long history of enmity toward the United States turns tanks and troops against his own people, killing hundreds of protesters. His country threatens to split along sectarian lines, with the violence potentially spilling over to its neighbors, some of whom are close allies of Washington.

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President Bashar al-Assad, right, with his brother Maher at the funeral of their father, Hafez al-Assad, in Damascus in 2000.

Libya? Yes, but also Syria.
And yet, with the Syrian government’s bloody crackdown intensifying on Friday, President Obama has not demanded that President Bashar al-Assad resign, and he has not considered military action. Instead, on Friday, the White House took a step that most experts agree will have a modest impact: announcing focused sanctions against three senior officials, including a brother and a cousin of Mr. Assad.
The divergent American responses illustrate the starkly different calculations the United States faces in these countries. For all the parallels to Libya, Mr. Assad is much less isolated internationally than the Libyan leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. He commands a more capable army, which experts say is unlikely to turn on him, as the military in Egypt did on President Hosni Mubarak. And the ripple effects of Mr. Assad’s ouster would be both wider and more unpredictable than in the case of Colonel Qaddafi.
“Syria is important in a way that Libya is not,” said Steven A. Cook, senior fellow for Middle East studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. “There is no central U.S. interest engaged in Libya. But a greatly destabilized Syria has implications for Iraq, it has implications for Lebanon, it has implications for Israel.”
These complexities have made Syria a less clear-cut case, even for those who have called for more robust American action against Libya. Senator John McCain, along with Senators Lindsey Graham and Joseph I. Lieberman, urged Mr. Obama earlier this week to demand Mr. Assad’s resignation. But Mr. McCain, an early advocate of a no-fly zone over Libya, said he opposed military action in Syria.
Human rights groups are even more cautious. “If Obama were to call for Assad to go, I don’t think it would change things on the ground in any way, shape or form,” said Joe Stork, deputy director of the Middle East division of Human Rights Watch, which had supported military action in Libya. In this case, he said, sanctions were the right move.
Those measures freeze the assets of three top officials, most notably Maher al-Assad, President Assad’s brother and a brigade commander who is leading the operations in Dara’a. But Syrian leaders tend to keep their money in European and Middle Eastern banks, putting it beyond the reach of the Treasury.
The measures also take aim at Syria’s intelligence agency and the Quds Force of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, an elite paramilitary unit already under heavy sanctions from the United States. Iran, officials said, is using the force to funnel tear gas, batons and other riot gear to Syria.
The administration did not impose sanctions on President Assad, saying it focused on those directly responsible for human-rights abuses. A senior official said the United States would not hesitate to add him to the list if the violence did not stop. But the White House seemed to be calculating that it could still prevail on him to show restraint.
“Our goal is to end the violence and create an opening for the Syrian people’s legitimate aspirations,” said a spokesman for the National Security Council, Tommy Vietor. “These are among the U.S. government’s strongest available tools to promote these outcomes.”
The European Union said Friday that it was preparing an arms embargo against Syria and threatened further sanctions and cuts in aid. And in Geneva, the United Nations Human Rights Council passed a resolution condemning the violence, though the statement was diluted from one drafted by the United States.
The debate over the United Nations resolution demonstrated the difficulty in marshaling international censure of Syria. In Geneva, 26 countries supported the resolution, but nine voted against it, including Russia and China. The two countries blocked a similar effort to pass a resolution at the Security Council this week, a stark contrast to the tough action on Libya.
Even for the Obama administration, abandoning Mr. Assad has costs. For two years, it cultivated him in hopes that Syria would break the logjam in the Middle East peace process by signing a treaty with Israel. The United States tried to lure Syria away from Iran, the greatest American nemesis in the area.
Even the possibility of a change in leadership in Syria had reverberations this week, with the surprise agreement between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority to form a unity government. By most accounts, Hamas was motivated in part by a fear that if Mr. Assad were forced from power, it could lose its patron in Damascus.
Disarray in Syria could threaten Israel’s security more directly. While Israeli officials point out that Mr. Assad has hardly been a friend of Israel, if he were replaced by a militant Sunni government, this could pose even greater dangers.
Israel’s sensitivity about Syria is so acute that when reports began circulating this week that Israeli officials were pressing the White House to be less tough on Damascus, Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Michael B. Oren, called reporters to insist that his government was doing nothing of the sort.
Among other countries that are sensitive: Turkey, which shares a border with Syria and a Kurdish population that could be stirred up by unrest; and Saudi Arabia, which does not want to see another Arab government topple. While Mr. Assad’s fall would damage Iran’s regional ambitions, analysts offer caveats.
“The regime coming down in a speedy, orderly transition to a Sunni government would be a setback for Iran, but that’s not what’s happening,” said Andrew J. Tabler, a Syria expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “We’re headed for something much messier. The Iranians can play around in that.”
As the administration weighs its options, it faces a sobering fact: The United States has little influence over Damascus. Still, some analysts said the United States must leave open the possibility of tougher measures.
“If a Benghazi-style massacre is threatened, we would have to consider a humanitarian intervention under the same principle,” said Martin S. Indyk, Brookings Institution’s director of foreign policy. “Hard to imagine at this point when the death toll is 400. But if it rises to tens of thousands?”

Stephen Castle contributed reporting from Brussels.

Parties Seeking to Blame Each Other’s Policies for Gas Prices

WASHINGTON — Congress returns next week to a flaring brawl over oil industry profits and tax breaks, with both parties hoping to capitalize on growing public ire at high gasoline prices.

“When oil companies are making huge profits and you’re struggling at the pump, and we’re scouring the federal budget for spending we can afford to do without, these tax giveaways aren’t right,” President Obama said in his weekly address on Saturday. But in the Republican response, Rep. James Lankford of Oklahoma countered: “For more than two years, his administration has knowingly increased energy prices by choking off new sources of traditional American energy and smothering our economy in new energy regulations.
Last week, Mr. Obama touched off the latest flurry with a letter to Congressional leaders last week calling for the repeal of $4 billion a year in tax incentives for domestic oil and gas production, saying the industry was doing very well, thank you, and needed no help from the government. Republicans responded that the president’s proposal would only raise the cost of production and the price of gasoline, which now tops $4 a gallon in many parts of the country.
Both parties are planning legislative maneuvers this week to try to caricature their opponents as either in the pockets of the oil companies or hostile to domestic energy production.
The debate may generate a fair amount of noise that provides one side or the other with a temporary political advantage but is unlikely in the end to have an appreciable impact on gasoline prices.
“Every time Americans have to shell out $60 or $80 to fill their tanks, they mutter under their breaths about government and it puts pressure on Congress and the White House to do something,” said Byron L. Dorgan, the former Democratic senator from North Dakota who is now co-chairman of an energy project at the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington. “But it’s just howling at the moon. The basic laws of supply and demand haven’t changed.”
House Speaker John Boehner unwittingly gave the Democrats a political opening to pile on the oil companies by saying in an interview with ABC News last week that oil companies should “pay their fair share in taxes” and that Congress ought to reconsider some of the tax incentives they enjoy. He has since walked away from those remarks and said that raising any taxes would choke off the economic recovery and lead to higher prices of gasoline and other goods.
His comments came as lawmakers from both parties were home on recess, hearing a torrent of constituent complaints about the high cost of gasoline at the same time major oil companies were reporting near-record quarterly profits. Exxon Mobil, the world’s largest oil company, said it earned $10.7 billion in the first three months of the year, and other companies reported similarly robust earnings.
Mr. Obama seized on the opportunity to try to deflect some of the heat he has been feeling as gas prices have steadily climbed. He noted wryly at a political fund-raiser last weekend that his poll numbers tend to go up and down with pump prices, even as he admitted he had no “silver bullet” to bring those prices down in the short term. But he found ammunition in the tax breaks the oil industry has enjoyed for decades, portraying the industry as undeserving of them at a time when government needs all the revenue it can get.
“As we work together to reduce our deficits,” Mr. Obama said in a letter to Congressional leaders last week, “we simply can’t afford these wasteful subsidies.” Mr. Obama says the money saved should be used to finance more research into clean energy alternatives — a proposal he has made in his last two budget requests that has largely been ignored.
“The odds are low that the tax repeal goes through as a stand-alone measure, but you might see it as part of a broader deal,” said Michael A. Levi, an energy and environment specialist at the Council on Foreign Relations. He said it was in Mr. Obama’s interest to keep the issue alive both to align Republicans with the unpopular oil companies and to use as leverage as new budget negotiations begin.
Harry Reid, the Senate Democratic leader, said he would press for a vote as early as next week on repealing the tax subsidies. Democrats hope to paint Republicans who vote against the plan as tools of the industry.
“Now is not the time to stand idly by while large oil and gas companies get billions of dollars in tax breaks,” said Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana and chairman of the finance committee. “Now is the time to take concrete steps toward cleaner, more affordable, domestically produced energy.”
The measure could well pass in the Democratic Senate, although some Democrats from oil-producing states, like Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and Mark Begich of Alaska, are likely to oppose it.
But it has little chance of even coming to a vote in the Republican-run House, where Speaker Boehner is orchestrating a fresh chorus of “drill, baby, drill” with a series of votes on bills to allow new oil and gas exploration in the Gulf of Mexico and off the coast of Virginia.
“Our goal is to expand the supply of American energy to lower gas prices and create jobs,” said Michael Steel, spokesman for Mr. Boehner. “Raising taxes would have the opposite effect.”
Neither the Senate tax measure nor the House drilling bills is likely to become law because of the fierce partisan calculus of the current Congress. But some Republicans, including Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the party’s leader on budget matters, have left open the door for rethinking a range of government tax breaks as part of an agreement on the federal budget and deficit ceiling.
Some conservatives oppose energy subsidies of all sorts — including those for ethanol, wind, nuclear and solar power — and would be willing to see them all repealed as part of a reform of the business tax code.
Oil industry tax breaks — some of them dating back a century — have been debated for years but have survived every elimination attempt. According to a breakdown by the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation, oil companies receive about $4 billion a year in federal subsidies and can avail themselves of tax breaks at virtually every stage of the prospecting and drilling process.
One lingering provision from the Tariff Act of 1913 — enacted to encourage exploration at a time when drilling often led to dry holes — allows many small and midsize oil companies to claim deductions for tapped oil fields far beyond the amount the companies actually paid for them.
Another subsidy, devised by the State Department in the 1950s, allows U.S.-based oil companies to reclassify the royalties they are charged by foreign governments as taxes — which can be deducted dollar-for-dollar from their domestic tax bill. That provision alone will cost the federal government $8.2 billion over the next decade, according to the Treasury department.

David Kocieniewski contributed reporting from New York.

When Bad Guys Go Good, They Get Dead

In sword fights to the death, there seems to be some kind of code of chivalry that dictates their actions and makes the fight fair. You would expect chivalry and that crap from good guys, after all, it is their job. But bad guys are bad for a reason: they don’t play by the rules. So why do villains often do the same sort of chivalrous behavior as their Heroic counterparts? It doesn’t make sense, especially since, every time they do, they get themselves killed. Let’s look at three examples of Bad Guys Gone Good, and how they got all noble all of a sudden.
1. Returning an opponent’s weapon after they’ve been disarmed.
This is really stupid. You’re in a climatic sword fight to the death, and somehow your enemy has lost his grip on his weapon and is defenseless. Instead of skewering him, you instead either allow him to pick his sword back up, or just straight up give it back to him. Let’s go to a video example:
Go to 2:20, if you please.

As you can see, we’re in the midst of an epic battle with King Arthur, his Knights, and Merlin’s tribe of pissed of blue people facing off against Cerdic and his Saxon hordes in the Battle of Badon Hill. One of Arthur’s knights, a strangely samurai character named Tristan, rides up to Cerdic and challenges him to a duel by a few seconds of intense staring. Cerdic commits a faux pas by ditching his primary weapon, a two handed battle axe, in favor of the standard back up sword.

Everyone knows that Battle Axe > Sword.

There is an intense duel, then through some quick slash work, Tristan loses his sword and is left standing there looking a little foolish, and a little wounded. Any normal person would just go stab crazy on the fool and be done with him, but not Cerdic. For reasons unknown, he instead kicks Tristan’s sword back to him and waits for him to pick it up before attacking again. This is not a good thing to be doing. This man is trying to kill you, logic dictates you must kill him first, by any means necessary. Granted, Tristan was in pretty bad shape and only managed a couple more swings before going down for the count, but what if he got a lucky shot in while you’re being courteous? This is the same guy that killed one of his own men for trying to get it on with a wench, then killed the wench, then slashed his own son’s face when he questioned the coitus interupptus. Why is he showing mercy now?

“I don’t have to make sense, I just have to stand dramatically sideways for awhile.”

2. Robbing yourself of an advantage to make the fight even.
This primarily manifests itself in duels when a man with a gun confronts a man with a sword, then ditches the gun to engage in gratuitous sword play. Observe:
My spiel starts at 12:45, feel free to watch part 9 to see the rest of the fight.
Here we have the final climatic fight in The Mask of Zorro. Antonio Banderas comes face to face with Captain Love, the man who killed his brother. Zorro pulls out his sword, all slow like, while the Captain pulls out his pistol. He had the masked man dead to rights, but instead throws his gun away to sword fight the guy. This is an expert swordsman you’re facing here, one who almost killed you on previous occasions, yet you choose to engage this man on his own ground? His boss had no such problems with shooting Zorro, he tried several times. After all, if Indiana Jones can shoot a guy with a sword, anyone can.

3. After knocking your opponent to the ground, you let him get back up.
The guy who just tried to slice your ear off is on his ass, definitely at a disadvantage. It should be easy to go over there and cut that SOB, yet you let him get back up and reengage. Why? Well, let’s ask her:
12:15, my good chap.
So, we’re in another climatic battle, this time in the land of Narnia, between a group of schoolchildren with their talking animal posse against the forces of the White Witch, feared wielder of the Popsicle Stick of Death. We’ve gotten to that point in the battle where foot soldiers stand around and watch the heroes vs. villains showdown. After young Edmund breaks her Popsicle stick, the Witch stabs him with it, causing Peter to lose his shit and come after her.

Somebody’s gonna get messed up.

At a point early on in the battle, the White Witch knocks Peter off his feet, but instead of going in for the kill, she just stands there in her action figure pose while he gets up and attacks again. There is no reason for her to do this. It’s not even like she’s got a problem with stabbing children while they’re down, either. She goes for the kill right at the end doing the same thing. But because she dicked around so much, the damn lion showed up and literally ate her face. Ironically while she was on the ground, defenseless.

Well, I guess you could say that decision came back to bite her, chuckle chuckle chuckle.

So, there you have it. Three villains, three acts of chivalry, three dead villains. The moral of this story for you movie bad guys reading this? Never stop being a bad guy, even for a moment. The minute you show one act of being not a bad guy, the good guy will shove something pointy into your ribcage.

Michael Jackson and Me: Memoirs of a Badass Monkey

I discovered these memoirs written in fecal matter on pieces of newspaper and napkins on my doorstep one day addressed to “The Guy Who Writes Things For The Internet.” It’s taken me awhile to get the words translated to paper, and more time to add some appropriate artwork, but I believe it is finally ready for publication. This may be the most groundbreaking and awesome thing you read in this lifetime, so prepare yourself. You might want to use the bathroom first. You Ready? Okay, you may now read.

PART ONE
Monkey Origins: Amazonia…

I have led an interesting life, far more interesting than most people. I’ve done many things, some I’m proud of, others, not so much. This is not the life I envisioned I would be leading, but I wouldn’t change a thing. They call me Michael Jackson’s monkey, though you’ve probably never called me that because prior to a few seconds ago, you didn’t know I existed. I bet you’re probably wondering why they call me MJ’s monkey, and I’ll answer it, partly. They call me a monkey because I actually am a monkey, which just blew your mind because monkeys can’t write memoirs, right? Well, I’m writing this, so you doubters can go sit on a flag pole.

Literally? Okay, that’s a little creepy, guy.

Everything will be explained to you in time. Why I’m writing this, how the Hell I’m able to write this, my name, who shot J.R., just everything. I hope you enjoy my tale, and tell it to your friends, and maybe link it on Facebook so I can become a really famous monkey, and maybe then they’ll give me a book deal and I can go on Oprah and fling poo at her because seriously, I hate her ass. Okay, maybe that was a little over the top, but I’m not making revisions because, have you ever tried to erase a poop smear? It’s not easy, is it?

Photo of the author.

My story begins like that of many other capuchin monkeys: I was born in a small monkey village in the Amazon rainforest. My mother was a good caretaker, but not very bright, as she would freak out every time she saw her reflection. My deadbeat father was never around, always roaming the jungle looking for new ways to get stoned. When he was carried off by a Harpy Eagle one day, I felt no pity.
By the time I was 5 years old and fully grown, I realized this village I lived in kinda sucked. We had no running water for one thing, and there was an unhealthy obsession with our own fecal matter that stays with me even today. Hell, our main sport was the Poop Shoot, a crap flinging contest that measured one’s accuracy and quality of ammunition of our sacred weapon. When not worrying about poop, we worried about what we were going to eat to make poop. Berries and tree nuts were good fare, but once we started picking up lizards from off the ground and eating them, that’s when I realized everyone was really stupid. I came to recognize that I was the only self aware monkey in the village.

I started planning my escape from the village when I was 6. No one would miss me, they already thought me strange for not playing any Monkey Poop Games and for refusing to eat dung beetles, which had become the new fad. It seems so obvious now why a bug with poop right in its name would become popular with monkeys of that caliber.

It was worshiped as a god.

I climbed to the top of the tallest tree one night, calling to the heavens to save me from these relatives I had, because they were all morons. And in response, the clouds let loose a torrent of rain, which happens on occasion in the rainforest. What was new was the bolt of lightning that came down from the sky and set the tree next to me on fire. Monkeys started fleeing from the blaze. I ran to help the trapped monkeys before I realized that I really didn’t care about any of those fecalphiliacs. So, I turned around and fled into the jungle as more trees started burning.
I made my way to the top of a nearby hilltop and surveyed the damage. My entire monkey village had burned, leaving a giant black scar on the rainforest. Monkeys were in the middle of the brand new clearing screaming things and flinging poop ash. So, with resounding finality, I mooned them, even though they couldn’t see me, and went into the jungle, never to return.
I had a fine time traveling through the rainforest, though every life form I met tried to kill me. I fought snakes, army ants, Venus fly traps, even a couple of trees that tried to strangle me with their vines. But my greatest foe proved to be the animal that had claimed the life of my useless father, and now wanted to make a meal out of a far more worthy adversary: the Harpy Eagle.

The bastard in the flesh. And in the feathers.

The bird got the drop on me, I will admit. If I hadn’t bent over at just the right moment to grab some delicious berries, the damn thing would have gotten me. As it was, he swooped right over my head, going back up into the sky for another pass. I was not about to have my story cut short by some raptor with an attitude problem, so I looked around quickly for any weapons  I could find. I came up with a sleeping snake that was suddenly roused to attention when I grabbed him by the tail and swung him around and around, mostly to keep him from biting me.
When the Eagle came back down to try to grab me, I flung my reptilian slingshot, striking that bitch right in the beak at high speed. The Eagle lost control, crashing into the ground with resounding force, coming to rest in a large pile of poop. Poop features prominently in my story, in case you hadn’t already figured that out. The snake had been killed on impact, it’s spine shattering with the force of my mighty forearms. The Eagle was still alive, and seriously pissed off. But, a crumpled wing meant it couldn’t fly, so it hopped over to me and tried to peck my eyeballs out. I was forced to use my monkey martial arts and we engaged in a kung fu battle on the forest floor. Shouts of “Hi Ya!” and “Squawk” permeated the air.
I finally defeated my opponent by picking him up bodily and giving him a John Cena FU right into the River, where he was then consumed by the piranhas that are freaking everywhere in that river.

Like this, but with monkeys, eagles, and real violence. And more poop.

I continued on my travels, until one day I was shot in the ass with a tranquilizer dart. At first, I thought I had been bitten by some strange insect until a human in camouflage came out of the forest and told his friend that this would be a fine specimen for laboratory study. I was put into a cage as I fell unconscious, and was asleep for several hours before I woke up on a plane. My time in the wild was over. I had been taken INTO CAPTIVITY.
PART TWO
In Captivity
Why the damn people that captured me had to bring me to America in the loudest, clunkiest, most decrepit airplane that was still capable of flight I will never figure out. The ride to my new home was miserable. My ass still hurt from the tranquilizer dart (seriously, did they have to hit me with an armor piercing dart or whatever the hell that was? It felt like they stabbed me with a rusty screwdriver.) and I was groggy from the shit that dart pumped into me. Plus, I was pretty sure the pilot learned his aircraft control from playing Microsoft Flight Simulator.

I really hope those are just midgets.

We finally landed at a private airfield after what seemed like two weeks. The runway was made of dirt, which really improved my comfort level when we were bouncing up and down like a kid in a bouncy castle. It wasn’t until I was offloaded that I realized the entire cargo hold was loaded with animals. There were a half dozen other capuchins that I didn’t recognize, and one that I did: Cousin Elmo. I refused to acknowledge him when he waved his arms at me.

Oh piss off, Elmo.

There were also a bunch of other kinds of monkeys, a bunch of other animals, and even a Harpy Eagle. I could tell from the look in his eye that he knew I fed one of his close family members to the Fishes. I was offloaded last. We were put into a cargo van and driven to a large white building. A sign on the front proclaimed it to be MURDERFACE LABORATORIES “where we airquote care airquote about animals.” Oh goody. Sounded like a place where I could have a time and a half.
The walls were spattered with blood, the scientists were all nuts, and I was a tad concerned for my welfare. I wasn’t sure what they were going to do to me, but for some reason I knew it was going to involve exposing my internal organs to the light of day. The crates were put into a holding room, also covered with blood for some reason. Then, a scientist walked in. He was wearing a large hat, a malevolent smile, and blood soaked leather pants. He was the man who would shortly become my mortal enemy: Crocodile Dundee.

Why so serious, mate?

Never in my life before or since have I ever seen an Australian so evil, so twisted, so vile. When he spoke, it was with a voice that made puppies cry. “G’Day, mates! My name is Croc Dundee, and I’d like to welcome you to my version of Hell on Earth! I’d like to start out by telling you that you’re all gonna die here, and it will most likely be very painful. Why, you ask? Well, because I’m evil, and this is what evil people do. Also, this.” And with that, he opened the cage containing Cousin Elmo, took out my scared kinsman, and BIT HIS FUCKING HEAD OFF. Just bit it off, and spat it out on the ground. He carried out the corpse of the monkey, laughing maniacally. And that’s when I realized that I was incredibly, completely, inescapably fucked.

I was just about as screwed as this guy was. But only just.

Days passed, and I remained in my cage in the holding room. Every once in a while, Croc Dundee or one of his cronies would come in and take one of the animals out of the cage. None of them ever came back. I formulated a plan for what I was going to do when they came for me. I wasn’t going down without a fight. Finally, Croc Dundee came into the room with his sights on my cage. I gave myself over to the Force, knowing what I must do. When he opened the cage door, and stuck his face right in the doorway like a total moron, I reached back and flung poop at him. The excrement hit him right in the eye,  and he squealed in pain. Yes folks, Croc Dundee, manly villain, fucking squealed. Like a pig.
(Ha! I just used two Deliverance references in a row, and no one can stop me! AHAHAHAHA!)
He fell over, and I made my move, springing forth from the cage like a monkey getting out of a cage really fast. Two scientists came in, alerted by aforementioned squealing, and I quickly neutralized them with my Monkey Fu. They also conveniently left the door open. I made for the door, only to hear a squawk. The Harpy Eagle was the only other animal left in the holding room besides me that hadn’t been murdered, and was still trapped in his cage. I was extremely, extremely tempted to leave his ass there, but then I felt bad. Dumb conscience, I’m never going to get out of here with these annoying morals!

Quick! Where did that last sentence come from? The picture is a hint.

I leapt back up to where the stupid bird was and let him out of the cage using a key card from one of the scientists (yes they had key cards. They took their animal murder extremely seriously.) I climbed up on the Eagle’s back and we blew through the door. Alarm bells were sounding, scientists were arming themselves, and I started up my Poop Flinging Machine Gun. Many scientists were taken down by my nutty poop, and many more were just grossed out by it. Then some idiot opened a door, and we escaped from the MurderFace Laboratories. We went high up into the clouds as Croc Dundee burst out of the door. “You can run mate, but you can’t hide! I’ll find you if it takes me 50 years, you wanker!”

And this is a LittleKuriboh shout out. I’m referencing my favorite things like crazy today.

We did it! We had escaped from certain death, and were now free! But, where the Hell were we?
PART THREE
On the Lam.
We had escaped the laboratory, but I had no idea where we were. Arid looking desert stretched in all directions, with some mountains in the distance. I finally deduced we were in New Mexico. I wish I could say I figured it out by looking at a unique cactus, or some other method that makes me look smart, but actually, I just saw a sign.

Yes, I can read. If you hadn’t figured that out by now, there’s no help for your condition.

It was hot. It was dry. It sucked major ass. Remember, I’ve spent my entire life to this point in the rainforest, which is the exact opposite of the climate I was in now. The Harpy Eagle wasn’t faring much better, he was visibly tiring from the effort it took to keep us in the air. Finally, after flying for what seemed like a week, we stopped at the banks of the Pecos River to refresh ourselves. It was there that me and the Harpy Eagle had a long talk. It turned out his name was Steve, and he was a nice guy. Hard to imagine from a bird that makes meals out of monkeys, I know.

Steve, the Good Harpy Eagle.

We decided to go our separate ways, but not before Steve dropped me off at the nearest town.  As I watched him fly away, I had the strangest feeling that I hadn’t seen the last of him. But for now, I needed to figure out what to do. Obviously going back to the rainforest was out of the question. Not only was it thousands of miles away, but I was probably facing charges for calling upon the gods of nature to burn down my village. There was only one thing to do in my situation: go to Hollywood.

After all, it worked out so well for Fozzie Bear.

Since I was in New Mexico, that meant that if I headed west, eventually, I would stumble across Los Angeles. So, I headed west. I hitched a ride on the roof of a Lincoln Continental to Albuquerque, where I met the first human who wanted to be my friend as opposed to ripping off my face and wearing it as a mask: Bubba Jack, the Truck Driver. I met him just as he was tossed out of a local saloon for calling a fellow patron a “rampaging dickchoker of a fuckface,” which resulted in an epic barfight of the type only seen in movies.

Bubba didn’t fare well.

I was pretty sure he thought I was a figment of his imagination, after all, if you were confronted by a talking monkey after being smacked in the head during a barfight, before which you had an unspecified amount of Kraken Spiced Rum, would you take it at face value? Probably not. However, once he sobered up and realized that not only was I still there, but still spoke fluent English, he started taking me seriously. He was taking a load of prophylactics to San Francisco (go figure) and since Los Angeles was sort of on his way, and because he was being asked by an adorable monkey, he agreed to take me to my destination.

You can’t say no to this face.

We started up his big rig and headed west across the desert, swapping our life stories as we went. Most of Bubba’s life had been spent on the road, first as a roadie for Ozzy Osbourne, then as a hobo when Ozzy fired him for being “a bloody sod,” and now as a trucker. Bubba was quite surprised to hear of the laboratory and of the evil that was Crocodile Dundee, he explained that Dundee was the star of a popular movie made a few years before in which he terrorized New Yorkers with a big knife. That seemed to fit with the Dundee I knew.

That’s not a knife, that’s a bloody short sword.

We stopped for the night on the Arizona border. I had an uneasy feeling as I went to sleep that night, but didn’t find out why until the next morning. As we traveled down the deserted highway, a convoy of trucks, jeeps, APCs, and other military badass type vehicles came over the horizon. They were all decorated with animal corpses stretched over the hoods. Croc Dundee had caught up to me. Bubba saw them too, and stepped on the gas. But the heavy truck was no match for the faster vehicles, who gained ground at an alarming rate. They were alongside us in no time. I asked him if he had any weapons on board. He produced a can of pepper spray.

The very definition of bringing a knife to a gun fight.

They started pulling out very large guns and putting holes in the truck, which as you can imagine didn’t go over so well with us. I started throwing random things out the window, including poop. I was a creature of habit, after all. My barrage had no effect on the convoy, however, and it looked bleak. Then I got an idea. After making sure that Bubba was securely fastened to his seat, I suddenly jumped into his field of vision and disrupted the driver so that he lost control of the big rig, and with a tremendous crash, it tipped over, collecting all of the convoy vehicles in the process. Screeching metal, crying people, assorted crashing sounds, etc. I clung to the steering wheel for dear life, and finally, the truck stopped sliding. Bubba was dazed, but otherwise unharmed. The convoy wasn’t as lucky. Most of the cars had been totaled, people were unconscious and dead everywhere, and the entire scene was covered in packages of condoms.

Awesome Image Sensor Overload: Image Replaced with Puppy.

Bubba and I escaped from the wreckage, and made for one of the vehicles that looked to be still working. The driver tried to shoot us, but was quickly dispatched by Monkey Fu. We were just about to get in when a voice behind us demanded that we hold it right there. We spun around to discover that Croc Dundee had made it out of the wreckage as well, and was holding a very big gun on us. Bubba distracted him by convincing him to take the safety off his weapon first, and I hit him in the eye with poop. Again. He was never going to learn. We sped off while Dundee writhed on the ground in pain. We made it into Phoenix by nightfall, and camped out in a cheap motel. The newspapers the next morning carried an “interesting” headline:

However, there was no mention of the Croc Convoy. He must have managed to clean up his part of the crash before the authorities arrived. I knew I hadn’t seen the last of him, but it would take awhile for him to rebuild his forces and come after me again, so for now, I was safe.  We continued on in our stolen truck, stripped of the insignia of the Croc Convoy. After a few days, we had made it into Southern California. However, we didn’t quite make it into Los Angeles. Somehow, we went North, around the city, and it was awhile before we realized our mistake. We were traveling through the city of Santa Barbara when the truck broke down. It sustained more damage in the crash than we realized, and the engine finally quit on us.

Bugger.

It was at that point that Bubba and I decided to split up. Well, not really decided, Bubba called a taxi and the driver refused to transport me without a cage. I thought that was bullshit, and told Bubba to go on without me. I watched as my second companion in a week disappeared from view and pondered what to do now. I turned to look where I was, and noticed the fancy looking property behind me. A fancy gate with a sign on it was right in front of me. The sign said Neverland Ranch.
PART FOUR
The King and I
I was probably the only sentient creature in America who didn’t know who Michael Jackson was in the year 1988, so Neverland Ranch held no meaning for me as I stared at the wrought iron gates. But, I saw a house up there, and figured that, with my winning personality, I could woo whatever eccentric rich dude lived up there and be set for awhile.

If all else failed, I could fool him with a masterful disguise.

So, using my tree climbing ability, I scaled the fence and made my way up the drive. It took longer than I expected, since I had to walk (turns out monkeys are not very good at the whole “walking” thing.) I finally arrived at the door, and knocked. No answer. I knocked again, and still no answer. I then realized that no one could hear me because I had me some tiny hands. So, I went with the more brazen tactic of throwing a rock through a window.

In all fairness, I meant to throw it AT the window. How was I supposed to know it would break? I lived in the rainforest, we didn’t HAVE glass.

“What the Hell?” I heard from inside. Uh oh. I had done it now. This was probably the one guy from California that was pro-firearm, and he was going to come out shooting. Then the door opened. My first opinion about Michael Jackson was that he was gayer than Freddie Mercury (this was the ‘80s, after all.) MJ was wearing a purple robe with his long hair put up in a ponytail. He was carrying a coffee cup and smelled like he had just come out of a bubble bath (he had.) He looked around for a person, but didn’t see anyone since I’m about two feet tall. “Yo, Mr. Bubbles. Down here.”

I was kind of a jerk back then.

He looked down at me. If he was surprised to see a talking monkey, he didn’t show it. “Why did you throw a rock through my window?” “I have an instinctual fear of windows. Yours looked threatening.” (See? Humongous sarcastic asshole.) “Okay, better question. What are you doing on my property?” I decided to stop bullshitting. “Truthfully? My car broke down outside the gate, it just got towed, and my traveling companion abandoned me to go to Hollywood.  I’ve just been chased across three states by a mad Australian that wants to dismember me after being kidnapped from my home in the rainforest, and I’m having a bad hair day. I need a place to stay.”

I forgot to mention Operation Broken Rubber.

Well, he took me in, and we became friends. I found out Michael was a very famous pop star, but didn’t really care, because I knew who he was in private: a really strange but relatively nice guy. I became his right hand monkey and confidant. I was also behind many of the things that Michael did. For example, I was the one to convince him to get a Petting Zoo on Neverland Ranch. When he had his third child, I tried to instruct him in how monkeys hold their young, since he was inexperienced. It……didn’t go well.

I watched Michael slip deeper and deeper into despair and misery during our twenty years together. At times, he thought I was his only friend. The slanderous allegations made against him really took a toll on him, and I was sure I knew where they were coming from. Croc Dundee couldn’t get at me, but he could get to me through Michael, and that’s just what he did. Then one day disaster struck. It all started when I went to get outfitted for a pirate costume for Michael’s latest party.

The same costume I used to start a movie career, funnily enough.

I came home, and discovered the best friend I would ever have dead. The doctors all said it was an accidental overdose, but I discovered a note that I didn’t show to the police:
G’Day Mate! As you can see, I have ended your faggy friend here. If you had just been a good little monkey and been dissected all those years ago, this wouldn’t have happened. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHHAAHHHAHAAAH (It went on like that for half a page) HA! Now, if you don’t want me to start killing off other people you like, like this guy’s children, you’ll face me in a duel to the death, mate. You can bring any weapon you like, except guns because those are for girls, and we battle at that spot in the desert where we last met. You know the one. Your friendly neighborhood asshole, Crocodile Dundee.
I was filled with rage and a thirst for VENGEANCE. So, after calling 911, I prepared myself for battle. I dressed in my pirate costume, started sticking knives in every pocket, found a miniature chainsaw, brushed up on my Monkey Fu, and ate an entire box of Raisin Bran so I’d have plenty of fiber for the battle ahead. Also, because I thought it was cool, I brought a voodoo staff. Then I set off in Michael’s helicopter for Arizona.

I was so pissed, I was playing Ride of the Valkyries and I would have brought napalm if I had found some.

I arrived at the site of my last battle with Dundee. No one had ever bothered to do anything with the crashed tractor trailer, and the rusting wreck remained on the side of the lonely road. I waited for about an hour before I saw one of those damn trucks he likes so much cresting the hill. It took him 10 minutes to arrive at the battleground. He had one of his trademark evil grins on his face as he got out of the car. “So, you came. Very noble of you. Stupid, but noble.” “Dundee, I’m going to kill you right in the goddamn face. You fucked with the wrong Monkey!” Dundee drew that knife/short sword, while I pulled out a pair of knives. And the battle began.

This is my knife. There are many like it, but this one is mine…

Metal clashed with metal as I flipped around Like Yoda in Attack of the Clones, utilizing my Monkey Fu to tail smack Dundee in the face at every opportunity. The duel was heated. One car drove by very slowly to look at the fight, then drove off very fast when a stray knife went flying through the air and almost punctured one of his tires. I was slowly losing the battle, I realized when I started losing my many weapons to blows of his swordknife. I was down to my chainsaw, which proved to be very effective until it ran out of gas. Then it was just a bludgeoning tool.

Useless piece of biscuit eating flim flam chowder head darn tooting machinery.

Then, a climactic moment. With a fluid motion, Dundee knocked my chainsaw aside and then chopped down, cutting off my tail! My precious tail! He motherfucking cut it off! NOOOO! I fell to the ground, screaming in pain and in sorrow because I just lost a limb to this bastard. Dundee chuckled as he stood over me, then raised his weapon to strike a mortal blow. It looked like the end for me. Then, a sparkle of hope. The voodoo staff I had brought along for shits and giggles was laying right next to me. I quickly grabbed it, and raised it as if to block his strike. Imagine my surprise when the jewel on the end lit up and burned that fucker with a laser shot to the face!

TO THE FACE.

Dundee writhed in pain and began to act strangely, his face going all wonky. Then, he split into two Dundees, one with an evil looking face, and the other with a not evil looking face. The evil Dundee spoke with the voice of Satan: “Ah! You have separated me from my host! You will pay for this, monkey! A curse of fire be upon……..” I didn’t let him finish his sermon before I hit him in the eye with a very fiberlicious piece of poo. Satan/Dundee screamed in terror as it impacted his eye, then exploded, sending Dundee chunks everywhere. As the dust settled, I looked around and noticed the nice looking Dundee was still there. “Who the Hell are you?” I asked him. “I’m Paul Hogan. I’ve spent the last 30 years being possessed by the demon known as Crocodile Dundee. All because I wanted to be famous in someplace other than Australia. I was such a fool. I’m sorry for everything, mate. I really am.” I almost didn’t forgive him.

I almost attacked again.
Then I decided enough blood had been shed today (seriously, it was all over the place.) “I forgive you. Now go back to Australia and never be seen again. Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles was seriously the worst movie ever.” He nodded and got back in the truck, and drove off. I too got back in my helicopter and flew back to Los Angeles.
After the funeral for Michael, I disappeared, not wanting to live in an empty house with so many bad memories. I took to the road, where I still am today. I’ll probably spend the rest of my life on the road, but, if you should happen to see a monkey in a pirate costume without a tail, stop and have a chat for awhile, so I can steal your wallet-I mean, tell you of my tale (pun) in person. I have truly lived an amazing life, and will have more adventures in the years to come. My name, you ask? I’ve been called many names. Sexy Beast, Rotten Bastard, Chuck. But you can call me……..Michael Jackson’s monkey.

Oh, one more thing. Remember when I said I thought I would see Steve the Harpy Eagle again? Turns out I did. I crashed into him with my helicopter on the way back to Los Angeles, before he slid up into the propellers.
Whoops.
THE END.

Royal Wedding Toast Advice for Windsors and Middletons Alike

“The speech will be like any best man’s speech,…dig him in the ribs a bit and embarrass him – make him lose a bit of hair.”
Prince Harry to Bob Woodruff. Good Morning America, March 31, 2011
Harry, you’re an epic bro and a prince among dudes but your toast is heading into dangerous territory, and not the cool, action hero kind you visit for a living. In fact, Team William and Team Kate could use some schooling on toasts at family weddings.  We know you’re thinking, “Who do these Yanks think they are? Australians?” We’ve never been to England or eaten a crumpet. However, Redbox, News of the World, and years of watching Dr. Phil qualify us to help…again (just like WW1 and WW2)
We get it; he’s the first born and the third Windsor standing between you and the crown. It’s only Shakespearian that you want to jab at him. Yet, who’s more beloved than a sibling? We suggest a self help intensive. A dark night of the soul devoted to purging toxicity will free you to display bromantic feelings. Sir Elton will be there, just look into his eyes for support. There’s a knight who knows when to drop his armor.
Pippa, girl, whether you’ll speak at Buckingham Palace or spoke earlier at Kate’s hen party, we hope you’re not too shy to give a maid of honor toast at all. While you’re not marrying a prince (that’ll change if mama has her way), you’re certainly not dropping out of university in a French maid’s outfit so you can bake 21 cakes for Hello! magazine’s 21st birthday, like your brother James. You’re a sweet, loyal kid sister who runs errands in knee-high boots. You’re Anne Hathaway in every romantic comedy except Princess Diaries, but don’t let that make you feel like a commoner. We did our research and came up with an affirmation for you: “I’m the lady in waiting who doesn’t have to curtsy; I’m fragrant, tall and climbing high as a wisteria vine; I come from plane folk-doors to manual!” If you stick with it, we’re sure you could rock Buck House hard. You might become popular!

Props to William for having the Ninth Earl of Spencer speak. E9’s an author and broadcast journalist. He’s also the groom’s late mother’s brother, so he’ll be there to represent. A lame choice would be an uncle who’s notorious for an over the top lifestyle including drugs and prostitutes. That eliminates two. It’d be chill if Fergie spoke, but she’ll be in Milwaukee with the rest of the Black Eyed Peas.
We can’t decide whether it’s better to be Defender of the Faith and Future King of England, or a multimillionaire who owns a direct mail party favor business with his wife and can still get an employee discount on British Airways. Judging by toast difficulty, it would be a tossup.
A father of the bride’s speech offers insight into his daughter. Mike, it’s tempting to just Google her, but the bad press depicts her as a calculating social climber who seduced William with a see-through dress, and the good press portrays her as dull and unambitious. Your challenge is to say something new that reflects the kind of wife, mother, and Queen of England she’ll be. That story about falling down in a roller disco wearing yellow hot pants might be the stuff.
His Royal Highness’ task is to give a light hearted speech discussing his relationship with his son, which up until now has remained one of the great mysteries of the House of Windsor. Obviously they get along, if not, wouldn’t the press report that? Unless that 17th century royal decree making it punishable by beheading is still in effect. Charlie, you’ve been speaking publicly since you were a Little Prince, but then again we heard your secret tape to Camilla regarding a desire to be her feminine product. Talking about your child is different. Ask any teenager.
The fathers should meet for a brew to hash it out. Pub or palace, it’s all good.
And now, the Bridegroom’s toast. If you were a normal guy, Wills, all you’d have to do is thank the bride’s parents for producing a smoking hot babe, then thank the guests for hanging, and finally toast the attendants and give them some swag. Mainly the tax payers of England and your grandma are throwing this shin dig, so we suggest you use most of your speech to thank them. You could write thank you cards to 80 million people, we’re sure they’d be cool with that, but we don’t see that flying with the old lady. Unfortunately, we have no experience toasting HRM. You’re on own for that one, stiff upper lip and Expecto Patronum!

Top Ten Video Game Pets

Take a hike, Tails. Get lost, Luigi. Screw you, Morrigan (you did already? my mistake). Who needs companions to watch your back in-game when you can have pets? They’re loyal, don’t talk back (most of the time) and you tend to feel a little less bad when their AI does something stupid because they usually have at least some redeeming features, even it’s just their adorable idle animation (SILENCE, I HAVE NO FEELINGS).
Without further ado let’s take a look at some of video gaming’s best pets…

1.      Dogmeat (the Fallout series)


Named after the dog in Mad Max 2 (and in fact also the same breed, an Australian cattle dog), Dogmeat is a faithful and surprisingly robust companion. With a penchant for free food and leather jackets (another reference to the film), Dogmeat has decent hit points and can potentially do quite a lot of damage to enemies with his bites. His latest incarnation in Fallout 3 has been said by the developers to be a descendent of the original, distracting your foes by selflessly throwing himself at them (you need to make sure he doesn’t get himself killed this way) and finding you useful items (thus predating the dog in Fable 2’s condom-hunting antics); he even seems to be mysteriously capable of lockpicking somehow, the wily mutt. Fallout 2 also features robotic dogs, the most notable of these being K-9 (who you fix and rescue from his dastardly doctor master), while Fallout: New Vegas features an awesome-looking cyborg dog known as Cyber-Hound Mk. III, LEO Support Model, Serial Number B955883 (or Rex for short).
2.      Agro (Shadow of the Colossus)


Your only companion in a vast and lonely world, Agro is vital for not only transport but also for defeating some of the giant colossi you encounter. Agro himself is massive (seriously, he has to be at least five times your size) and beautifully animated, with little touches such as his panting and snorting really bringing him to life (he even runs away if you happen to be aiming a little too much in his direction with your bow). You can also perform tricks while riding him (provided you don’t plunge off a cliff in the process… not that he’ll let you), and if he gets injured in any number of seemingly life threatening ways he hobbles determinedly after you (a pretty heart
wrenching sight in itself) before quickly recovering. The horse is badass, and I think everyone feels the same way about a certain incident involving him towards the end of the game.
3.      Lamarr (Half-Life 2)


Somewhat unconventional pet of Dr Isaac Kleiner, Lamarr (named after 1930s film star and inventor Hedy Lamarr) is a debeaked headcrab who is still quite happy to attempt to “couple” with human heads despite this effective neutering (much to Barney’s chagrin). Last seen seemingly being blasted off in a rocket in Episode 2 (Kleiner failing to realise the significance of the eight and half pound anomaly prior to its launch), Lamarr is pretty cute in her own special, head-humping way (hey, at least she wasn’t a poison one). She shall be missed.
4.      Dog (Half-Life 2)


Alyx Vance’s 8 foot tall robot companion, originally built by her father Eli to protect her when she was young. Having been repeatedly upgraded over the years (hence his massive size) Dog is unquestioningly loyal and impressively strong, his most notable feats including lifting Combine Mobile Walls, hurling Alyx and Gordon across a ravine in a burnt out van and singlehandedly defeating a Strider by ripping out its brain (this accompanied by much goo). However, he also has a softer side, and it’s hard not to feel some form of affection for him and his shambling gait (which, admittedly, is chillingly similar to that of the Tank from Left 4 Dead) and penchant for playing fetch with rollermines.
5.      Weighted Companion Cube (Portal)


Perhaps only a pet in a rather loose sense of the word, but certainly one insofar as you have to take care of it (GLaDOS does tell you to). Despite its relatively brief appearance in Test Chamber 17, the Weighted Companion Cube is arguably Portal’s most iconic gift to popular culture. With its familiar chunky shape and pretty pink hearts, its distinctive appearance has been replicated in everything from plush toys to cakes. Heck, in game there is even a shrine to it apparently made by previous a test subject (or subjects?). However, your relationship is short and sweet; GLaDOS instructs you to euthanize your faithful companion in the Emergency Intelligence Incinerator after it accompanies you to the end of the test chamber. This mechanically unavoidable action comes back to haunt you in the end as GLaDOS informs you of a party you could have had had you “succeeded”, ruefully stating: “I invited your best friend the Companion Cube. Of course, he couldn’t come because you murdered him.”
6.      Puma (Gitaroo Man)


A tiny talking dog who bears more than a passing resemblance to Snoopy (and none at all to the animal that shares his name), Puma is responsible for giving the game’s weedy protagonist the last Gitaroo (essentially a magical weaponised electric guitar), thus transforming him into the titular hero. Puma himself transforms into AC-30 (named after a guitar amplifier), a canine robot with a boombox for a body and tiny dead cars for feet (no, really). He’s a pretty awesome sidekick, who teaches his owner to believe in himself as well as saving his ass a couple of times. He can also pilot a spaceship. Let’s face it, the dog’s got skills.
7.      Yoshi (the Super Mario series)

Top Ten Video Game Pets

Take a hike, Tails. Get lost, Luigi. Screw you, Morrigan (you did already? my mistake). Who needs companions to watch your back in-game when you can have pets? They’re loyal, don’t talk back (most of the time) and you tend to feel a little less bad when their AI does something stupid because they usually have at least some redeeming features, even it’s just their adorable idle animation (SILENCE, I HAVE NO FEELINGS).
Without further ado let’s take a look at some of video gaming’s best pets…

1.      Dogmeat (the Fallout series)


Named after the dog in Mad Max 2 (and in fact also the same breed, an Australian cattle dog), Dogmeat is a faithful and surprisingly robust companion. With a penchant for free food and leather jackets (another reference to the film), Dogmeat has decent hit points and can potentially do quite a lot of damage to enemies with his bites. His latest incarnation in Fallout 3 has been said by the developers to be a descendent of the original, distracting your foes by selflessly throwing himself at them (you need to make sure he doesn’t get himself killed this way) and finding you useful items (thus predating the dog in Fable 2’s condom-hunting antics); he even seems to be mysteriously capable of lockpicking somehow, the wily mutt. Fallout 2 also features robotic dogs, the most notable of these being K-9 (who you fix and rescue from his dastardly doctor master), while Fallout: New Vegas features an awesome-looking cyborg dog known as Cyber-Hound Mk. III, LEO Support Model, Serial Number B955883 (or Rex for short).
2.      Agro (Shadow of the Colossus)


Your only companion in a vast and lonely world, Agro is vital for not only transport but also for defeating some of the giant colossi you encounter. Agro himself is massive (seriously, he has to be at least five times your size) and beautifully animated, with little touches such as his panting and snorting really bringing him to life (he even runs away if you happen to be aiming a little too much in his direction with your bow). You can also perform tricks while riding him (provided you don’t plunge off a cliff in the process… not that he’ll let you), and if he gets injured in any number of seemingly life threatening ways he hobbles determinedly after you (a pretty heart
wrenching sight in itself) before quickly recovering. The horse is badass, and I think everyone feels the same way about a certain incident involving him towards the end of the game.
3.      Lamarr (Half-Life 2)


Somewhat unconventional pet of Dr Isaac Kleiner, Lamarr (named after 1930s film star and inventor Hedy Lamarr) is a debeaked headcrab who is still quite happy to attempt to “couple” with human heads despite this effective neutering (much to Barney’s chagrin). Last seen seemingly being blasted off in a rocket in Episode 2 (Kleiner failing to realise the significance of the eight and half pound anomaly prior to its launch), Lamarr is pretty cute in her own special, head-humping way (hey, at least she wasn’t a poison one). She shall be missed.
4.      Dog (Half-Life 2)


Alyx Vance’s 8 foot tall robot companion, originally built by her father Eli to protect her when she was young. Having been repeatedly upgraded over the years (hence his massive size) Dog is unquestioningly loyal and impressively strong, his most notable feats including lifting Combine Mobile Walls, hurling Alyx and Gordon across a ravine in a burnt out van and singlehandedly defeating a Strider by ripping out its brain (this accompanied by much goo). However, he also has a softer side, and it’s hard not to feel some form of affection for him and his shambling gait (which, admittedly, is chillingly similar to that of the Tank from Left 4 Dead) and penchant for playing fetch with rollermines.
5.      Weighted Companion Cube (Portal)


Perhaps only a pet in a rather loose sense of the word, but certainly one insofar as you have to take care of it (GLaDOS does tell you to). Despite its relatively brief appearance in Test Chamber 17, the Weighted Companion Cube is arguably Portal’s most iconic gift to popular culture. With its familiar chunky shape and pretty pink hearts, its distinctive appearance has been replicated in everything from plush toys to cakes. Heck, in game there is even a shrine to it apparently made by previous a test subject (or subjects?). However, your relationship is short and sweet; GLaDOS instructs you to euthanize your faithful companion in the Emergency Intelligence Incinerator after it accompanies you to the end of the test chamber. This mechanically unavoidable action comes back to haunt you in the end as GLaDOS informs you of a party you could have had had you “succeeded”, ruefully stating: “I invited your best friend the Companion Cube. Of course, he couldn’t come because you murdered him.”
6.      Puma (Gitaroo Man)


A tiny talking dog who bears more than a passing resemblance to Snoopy (and none at all to the animal that shares his name), Puma is responsible for giving the game’s weedy protagonist the last Gitaroo (essentially a magical weaponised electric guitar), thus transforming him into the titular hero. Puma himself transforms into AC-30 (named after a guitar amplifier), a canine robot with a boombox for a body and tiny dead cars for feet (no, really). He’s a pretty awesome sidekick, who teaches his owner to believe in himself as well as saving his ass a couple of times. He can also pilot a spaceship. Let’s face it, the dog’s got skills.
7.      Yoshi (the Super Mario series)


Starting out as Mario’s trusty steed and going on to have his own spinoff games, Yoshi the boot wearing dinosaur’s most well known ability is probably using his long tongue to grab and swallow enemies before somehow turning them into eggs… despite being male; apparently all of his species lay eggs regardless of gender. Different coloured Yoshis can do different things, such as blue ones flying or red ones spitting fireballs. Curiously Yoshi is often paired off with Birdo (I’m not even going to go there) in the Mario universe, which means that they have more than enough gender issues between them go round. Also EGGS SHOULD NEVER COME OUT OF YOUR MOUTH.
8.      The creature (the Black and White series)


Upon you receiving your creature in both games you were actually given a fair amount of choice of type (lions and tigers and bears, oh my!), but perhaps the most infamous of these was the cow (not the most impressive or regal creature to be your representative on earth, but I digress). In the first game you had to painstakingly teach your creature its abilities one by one (it tended to have a terrible attention span) while in the second you simply purchased them. The creature was (hopefully) a reflection of your own morals as a god, but even a goody-two-paws tended to have “accidents” such as kicking down a house because it couldn’t fit past it or eating its own poop before promptly throwing up over the nearest villager (which they then might decide to eat). Not the brightest button in the box but pretty useful in a battle; some of its fighting (and dancing) moves were pretty cool if nothing else.
9.      Hunter pets (World of Warcraft)


Without a pet as a hunter you’re not going to get very far, so spending that 20 seconds taming your first one at level 10 is always a special moment. Vital for drawing aggro off yourself so you can fill your foes full of arrows (or bullets, if you swing that way), your pet is there to tank and deal damage while you finish the job from a distance (unless you’re one of those hunters who insist on getting in on the action; if so WHY?!). Not especially endearing due to their lack of distinguishing features AI-wise, a lot of the affection garnered for them comes from their species or name (a giant crab called Fluffy is kind of amusing). Trolls are clearly the superior hunter (and overall) race, by the way.
10.     The Sims (The Sims series)


When do pets become people and people become pets? Somewhere between a virtual pet and a simulation, The Sims arrived on the scene in the year 2000, and for a while people were ignorant of the fact that they were in fact simply playing with a highly elaborate dolls house. Certainly an innovative creation, Maxis proceeded to bring out a load of highly successful expansion packs, providing your creations with even more stuff to waste their hard-earned simoleons on (klapaucius, you say?). However, it was only a matter of time before players would get bored, and this resulted in the discovery of the various methods of Sim slaying that the series has become infamous for. In The Sims 2 you can even use a cheat to spawn an item called “Rodney’s Death Creator”, which can be used to kill a Sim in any way. Lovely, Maxis.
Ella is intrigued by the announcement of three playable female characters in Gears of War 3, and would like to point out for those interested that preordering it at GameStop will net you a Beta access key. You want a shiny Beta Tester medal (and exclusive in game items), don’t you?