Assorted Irreverencies

By Michael Fumento

Since my wife and I both work in D.C. and live just outside of it, all this talk of a "dirty bomb" is really making us nervous. We're even thinking of getting a maid.

She Died for Love

According to the Ananova news service, a Romanian woman has died from an allergy to her husband's ejaculate. The husband told doctors they knew about her allergy to proteins in semen but didn't always use a condom when they had sex. Dr. Corneliu Ciocirlan told a local newspaper: "We did all that we could to save the patient's life but with no success. These allergies to sperm are extremely rare but very serious. I have never seen anything like this before." Alas, this was one guy who was NOT "shooting blanks."

The LAPD really blew it by arresting poor Robert Blake for killing his wife. Isn't it obvious she was murdered by the same person who killed Nicole Brown Simpson and Jon-Benet Ramsey?

Headline from Nature Science Update: "A Crayfish's Urine Scares Off its Enemies." And I thought I'd invented that!

"Better make friends with them first!"

Leave it to Cleavage

Now this is how a female attorney should dress!

Did Johnnie Cochran Think of this Defense?

As Saturday Night Live's "Church Lady" might have put it, "How conveeeenient!" In testimony during a wrongful death civil action against him, a Prince George's County, Maryland police officer said he couldn't remember pulling his gun and shooting in the back an unarmed suspect he mistakenly took for a drug dealer. Officer Carlton Jones said his mind just went blank while emptying a 16-round magazine. Only five rounds struck home, making Jones almost as bad a marksman as he is a liar.

Lifestyles of the Rich and Vacuous

Who needs the Psychic Friends Network when you have Barbra Streisand? USA Today reports that diva "Streisand is no psychic, but she long sensed a coming catastrophe, and that apprehension may have cultivated [her new Christmas] album's spiritual tone and quest for harmony."

"I can't explain it, but I had a feeling something was coming," Streisand told the paper in a phone interview from her Malibu home. But she's coping as best she can. "One day I tell myself, 'Screw everything, I'm getting a Carl's Jr. hamburger and eating fried chicken three nights in a row. I don't care about my weight.' The next day, my optimistic side takes over and I think, 'Wait a minute, life goes on, people will get wiser, justice will prevail. Maybe I should watch my diet.' I'm still in that state of confusion." And always was. Quick, somebody toss a burqa over her before she has another hindsight vision!

Truly, we are a nation of hypocrites!

"It makes sense to me!"

Headline: Mexicans See Banner Year for Monarch Butterflies

Good. Ship a monarch to Afghanistan. It may be the only thing to keep Afghani tribal differences from ripping the country apart again.

Bad timing; sad timing. Melanie Thornton, an American-born pop singer who had become a hit in Germany died in an airliner crash in Switzerland on November 25th. Her latest album was due to be released the next day. The title: "Ready to Fly."

Despite the collapse of his forces, Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammed Omar was defiant in a BBC interview broadcast, saying he’d rather die than "join an evil government" with the country’s former leader. Finally we agree with him on something.

Snakes alive! Er, dead. But expensive!

San Francisco's BART rapid transit system will pay more than $1 million after an endangered garter snake was found flattened at a construction site, officials say. BART's Board of Directors approved the payment to the contractor at the airport extension project, where work stopped for about 18 days last year as wildlife officials investigated the incident. "It was not clear whether it was the contractor's fault or BART's fault that the snake died, so we decided to go ahead and compensate the contractor for the lost time," said a BART spokesman. Serpents sure have moved up the ladder since the Book of Genesis.

Well, my household is one that is NOT going to give out Cipro to trick-or-treaters!

Calls appear to be intensifying for reducing or outright suspending the bombing of Afghanistan for the entire month of Ramadan. Some might think this ridiculous. After all, are we engaged in a death struggle against terrorism or planning a picnic? Goodness! How terribly brutish and insensitive of them! After all, did not the terrorists bypass the Christian day of rest in favor of crashing planes into our buildings on a Monday? So here’s what we do:  We double the attacks during Ramadan, saying that but for Ramadan we would have tripled them.

How often do you have to tell people that obesity kills?

A woman who fell to her death from the Knott's Berry Farm's "Perilous Plunge" in September couldn’t be belted in properly because she was too big for the ride, according to the manufacturer. The abdomen of Lori Mason-Larez, 40, measured 58 inches, according to an Orange County coroner's report. The seat belt is only 50 inches, said Sandor Kernacs, president of ride manufacturer Intamin Ltd.

The family of the 5-foot-8, 292-pound woman is suing Knott's Berry Farm, its owner, Cedar Fair LP, and Intamin for unspecified general and punitive damages.

"Our definition is that those people who have extreme dimensions . . . should not ride the ride," Kernacs told the Associated Press. "Those people who cannot be safely restrained should not ride it."

So why not keep them off the ride like you would a little kid or a pregnant woman?

If the company did try to limit riders according to weight or waist size, Kernacs said, advocates for the obese would quickly raise hue and cry. "Basically we cannot discriminate against anybody." Ah, but the Grim Reaper does.  (No, not the "Grim Reaper Ride," but death.)

There’s no indication yet as to whether the family will also sue the makers of all the food Mrs. Mason-Larez perilously plunged into her mouth to become so gargantuan.