High Kookookajoo

I like the name, 'Love Day', rather than naming the day after a minor-leaguer saint with dubious credentials. Love Day just seems more universal, accessible, and we all need a little love once in a while.

"Happy Valentine's Day," I said this morning, when my sweetie came downstairs, ready for work. We exchanged a small kiss. Every day our love is the same, no single day better or worse than any other.

Whatever you choose to call it, this is the day we honor carnal love, masquerading it as romance. On Love Day, who doesn't want it to end dancing the horizontal fandango with the consenting adult of our choice?

Sometimes a small kiss can mean more than a big fat wet one.

Goodbye, Anna Nicole

we all want your baby

now that you've truly become

femme fatale ity

Who else could we honor on this Love Day except the recently deceased Anna Nicole Smith? The world will be a less interesting place without her brass beauty and the tornado of public notoriety that followed her around. She parlayed the bodacious best of what nature gave her into quite a nice living for herself: fame and fortune, American style.

Anna Nicole may have taken on too much of the Marilyn Monroe model and suffered a similar tragic death, somehow karma. We're all potential accidents waiting to happen, but there's a few that travel at more dangerous speeds.

I mentioned to my son Matt that he should get in an early claim as the father of Anna Nicole's baby. Call a press-conference or something. Not only would it help cement his image as a super-stud, but it would also look great on his resume:

2007 -- Present: Paternity claimant for the love child of Anna Nicole Smith

No matter if he can't prove he was ever in the same country with her, never mind the same bed (or wherever she does it). It's the fashion of the Age to confess for fame.

It would be a sweet irony if the baby's DNA failed to match any of the guys claiming they jammed the bun into Anna Nicole's oven. Too bad that would leave a four-hundred-million-dollar baby with a probate judge for a father.

I love Halloween... well, for the kids sake, anyway. On the face of it, the entire ritual is weird, and must seem quite strange to those raised outside of the European Christian tradition.

Mrs. L., a Japanese national, happens to be one of them, as a matter of fact. Japanese don't really have costume holidays, but they have their share of devil's and demons, and these appear in many of the folk festivals. [As far as I can tell, the guys who dress up as the Japanese devil are always pretty drunk.] Mrs. L. does like the idea of kids going around getting free stuff from the neighbors, though. They do something similar in Japan on New Year's Day, though I understand it's strict a cash-only business.

I wrote a Halloween story a couple of years ago, riffing on an incident in my youth where we may have given an old women a heart attack by scaring the beejesus out of her with a cherry bomb.

I made my story different, though. This time the boys used a more direct method of getting rid of the old bag, though they swore it was only an accident. The story is called, Last Soldier to Die in the Pumpkin Wars -- click here to check it out.

Inspired by a friend who does radio plays, I made a half-baked effort to produce the piece as an 'audio-tale', with sound effects and actors. Well, I got started late, and may not make my self-imposed Saturday deadline.

I didn't manage to get any actors, either. I need 3 sixth or seventh-grade boys, an old woman, and someone to play a policeman. At first I thought, "I'll just ask the teachers at the Carlisle Middle-school."

Somehow I just didn't want to contact the school and ask for 3 boys to act in a radio play. They would probably assume I was some kind of wierdo.

I plan to solve that by next year and do a more professional release of the product. My audio editing software and rendering platform are okay, but not quite up to the task, either.

All Hallow's Eve

dress down like a witch,

my pretty... spin by the fire,

dance up a moonsong

We're invited to a Halloween party on Saturday. I'm going as Jimmy Hendrix's afro... it's hard to explain.... you have to try and envision it.

George Bush announces yet another reason for the Iraq War: prevent 'insurgents' from controlling the vital flow of Iraqi Oil. The timing, with the Katrina mess raging at the time, was outrageous.

No one in the media called him on it.

Curse of the Irish

no snakes in Ireland

in famine they could eat them

instead of spoiled spuds

This may be a controversial opinion, but if St. Patrick hadn't rid the Emerald Isle of snakes around 500 BCE, there might have been plenty of them around to eat when the potato famine struck 1,300-years later.

Then why is he the patron saint of Ireland? Good question, and it all has to do with politics. Think corned-snake and cabbage.

ENTERTAINMENT NEWS ANALYSIS: Mel Gibson has re-released an edited, 'sanitized', version of The Passion of Christ. Most of the goriest footage has been exorcised from the original cut.

Why Mel would want to remove the most compelling scenes from his original tour de force is beyond me. Investors shouldn't expect profits similar in scope to the first time around, as the S & M Fundamentalists who made last year's release such a big smash will stay away in droves from this watered-down travesty. ( S & M Fundies consider the hey-day of crucifixion under the Roman Empire a high-water mark of their movement. )

Shame on you, Mel. After a display of bloodsport and bloodspurt that made even Brian DePalma gag and retch, you finally sold out in the end. Stay true to your art, Mel Gibson!

It's snowing again. I think this is 46 days in a row.

The United Nations has named March 8th, "International Beheading Day", and the entire month of March, "International Beheading Month".

Millions of children all around the world will take part in the celebrations, many reenacting famous beheadings throughout history, or attending educational seminars on beheading technique, clean-up, and new advances in beheading technology.

I, for one, am just thrilled this folk holiday has at last been officially recognized. Every society on earth has traditions surrounding the beheading, dating back to prehistoric times. I've always been a student of Joseph Campbell, and see beheading as a basic human need as universal as the institution of marriage.

Not surprising given my lifelong interest, I have patented a new design for ethical beheading, and I'm now in the middle of a product rollout of the device, coincident with this month's festivities. (Yes... we are accepting applications from potential investors for second-round funding.)

Picture King Tut's sarcophagus, only not quite so fancy. Instead of gold, the outer package is custom-crafted from brushed stainless steel. There's a slot at the throat area, over which my device is bolted into place. The client is placed inside the airtight receptacle, though able to breath a mix of oxygen and nitrous oxide through tubes inserted up their nostrils (up to 24-hours). The cover is then closed, bolted shut, hermetically sealed, and placed upright within the visitor viewing area.

Everyone taking part in the execution is given a special text message code to type into their cellphones, only one of which, selected at random, will actually trigger the process. After a 30-second delay, enough time for the crowd or cameras to gather around the prisoner's eye-slot, a shotgun shell is fired by the triggering device. The force of the blast engages the multifunction blade--an ultra-heated (3,000 degrees, C.), electrified (8,880-volts, AC) tungsten-alloy cleaver that severs the client's throat and neckbone at supersonic speed, the heat cauterizing the wound and burning off loose nerve endings, the electric shock inducing an instantaneous unconsciousness state similar to that of electroshock therapy. At the same time, tiny, twin explosive darts are launched through the client's nose tubes. These pierce through the sinus cavity to embed deep within the prefrontal lobe where they burst open, redistributing the surrounding gray matter and introducing a 10X-fatal-dose of heroin--an extra, humane, precaution.

After automatic infusion of our proprietary genetically-engineered flesh-consuming microbes (Pat.-Pend.), the container is stored in a secure holding facility until it can be recycled in 5-7 years, saving the taxpayers money.

That's about it, in a nut shell.

Head Removal Is Humane

to behead, or not

a question for Your Honor

time-tested and true

I think beheading is the only sane way to kill people. And no, I am not saying that merely because of my potential business interests. It's just the right thing to do.