Newt Gingrich has reached such new heights in this regard that only a comedian can come close to making … er … sense of it: The Gingrich Who Stole South Carolina.

PS: I saw this video a few days ago and since then it has been steadily removed for copyright reasons, hopefully the link above will last. If not … well … the laugh will be on me.

‘How do you know you’re God?’
‘Simple, when I pray to Him I find I’m talking to myself’

The unassailable logic of Peter O’Toole playing the hilariously mad Jack Gurney, 14th Earl of Gurney. Somehow this quote has followed me at different stages of my life and for completly different, sometimes contradictory reasons, made sense.

Beyond that, the film needs to have a place on Wryday.

ENGINEERING SANTA – TRUTH OR MYTH

There are approximately two billion children (persons under 18) in the world. However, since Santa does not visit children of Muslim, Hindu, Jewish or Buddhist religions, this reduces the workload for Christmas night to 15% of the total, or 378 million (according to the Population Reference Bureau). At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that comes to 108 million homes, presuming that there is at least one good child in each.

Santa has about 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west (which seems logical). This works out to 967.7 visits per second. This is to say that for each Christian household with a good child, Santa has around 1/1000th of a second to park the sleigh, hop out, jump down the chimney, jump into the sleigh and get onto the next house. Assuming that each of these 108 million stops is evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false, but will accept for the purposes of our calculations), we are now talking about 0.78 miles per household; a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting bathroom stops or breaks. This means Santa’s sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second – 3,000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man made vehicle, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second, and a conventional reindeer can run (at best) 15 miles per hour.

The payload of the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium sized Lego set (two pounds), the sleigh is carrying over 500 thousand tonnes, not counting Santa himself. On land, a conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that the “flying” reindeer could pull ten times the normal amount, the job can’t be done with eight or nine of them Santa would need 360,000 of them. This increases the payload, not counting the weight of the sleigh, another 54,000 tonnes, or roughly seven times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth (the ship, not the monarch).

600,000 tonnes travelling at 650 miles per second crates enormous air resistance this would heat up the reindeer in the same fashion as a spacecraft re entering the earth’s atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer would absorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy per second each. In short, they would burst into flames almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them and creating deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team would be vaporised within 4.26 thousandths of a second, or right about the time Santa reached the fifth house on his trip. Not that it matters, however, since Santa, as a result of accelerating from a dead stop to 650m.p.s. in .001 seconds, would be subjected to centrifugal forces of 17,500 g’s. A 250 pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of the sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force, instantly crushing his bones and organs and reducing him to a quivering blob of pink goo

Therefore, if Santa did exist, he’s dead now!

For sometime I’ve been looking for a way to best express my view on (most) of the new changes in the liturgy. I don’t think, as many seem to, that it’s a hill to die on, but it is so bad and so ‘emperor’s clothes’ from those who try to defend it, that it does demand a response here even if only for the record. This Commonweal ‘recipe’ not only does that, but it makes for a very fitting Wryday Christmas entry.

But wait, there’s more. The comments section below the recipe is worth a ‘Wry’ read too. I particularly loved this one:

A Cookie Blessing: “O God, who see the cookies that you have graciously deigned to allow us to bake here according to this recipe that you have given us that we may give to others that which you have given to us here, bless, we pray, them, O Lord, that you may allow us to offer them in return to many, as we seek to preveniently nourish these your holy people, we pray, with the ineffable taste of the flour that you have graciously allowed us to refine, O Lord, with the milky milk that milkily issues forth abundantly from the many bovine animals which you have made and from the sweet sugar that sweetly comes from the sweet sugar cane plants which you have created for we your people, who humbly implore your blessings, that all of us may humbly eat of them, in order that you might, O Lord, we humbly beseech you, bless us and them, and, we pray, O Lord, and I forgot where I was going with this prayer.”

Amen!

I think that now has the new translation in a highly appropriate perspective. I can now have the cake and eat it too!

Apologies for the lack of Wryday posts in the last couple of weeks, a family bereavement has left our household a little glum and busy with other priorities.

I have been fascinated by events in Canberra yesterday. No matter what you think of Julia and the Labor government, it seems they have not been able to take a trick all year and, to mix metaphors, too many have been ‘own goals’. Now that negative momentum seems to have shifted and the icing on that rising cake has been the resignation from the Speaker’s chair of its long-time Labor incumbent, Harry Jenkins, for turncoat Nat/Lib (well its peculiar Queensland hybrid) Peter (Slippery Pete) Slipper.

Annabel Crab on The Drum explains it much better. It’s good writing, IMO and, appropriately for a Friday, has some amusing moments.

Harry’s gift: a seat, a vote, and order from chaos
By ABC’s Annabel Crabb
Posted November 24, 2011 13:00:51

Order!! I'm outa here!

Just when you thought this parliamentary year had entirely run out of fizzy-pop, there it was. Harry Jenkins, resigning from the speakership, relinquishing the nicest office in Parliament House, and causing thereby a fairly considerable power shift in the House of Representatives.

His stated reason? He had become frustrated by the speakership’s obligation to remain aloft from partisan political matters.

“My desire is to be able to participate in policy and parliamentary debate, and this would be incompatible with continuing in the role of Speaker,” he told an electrified chamber.

Now, a man who resigns in order to spend more time with his policies is a man of whom further questions probably need to be asked. That this impulse should strike Mr Jenkins at exactly the same time as the concerted attempt by the Queensland Liberal/National Party to disown its difficult and profligate son Peter Slipper further strains the notion of coincidence.

The result? A disaffected Slippery (already held in pretty poor odour among his colleagues) will commit party treason and defect, in return for an office of dignity and respect, a more accommodating pay packet, and the right to pour brandies for visiting bigwigs.

Slipper has remained in the chamber doggedly directing traffic on the floor of parliament pending what will presumably be his formal election to the speakership some time after lunch. Quite possibly, he was loath to step outside, lest he encounter an angry mob of his erstwhile colleagues.

Ambassador Jenkins (if I may be so bold as to rehearse the title) will return to the Government benches, boosting Labor’s voting numbers by one, and thus shifting the Poker Machine Of Damocles from its customary position six inches above the Prime Minister’s head.

What lies ahead? I think it is reasonably safe to predict several things:

1) A flood of recovered memories from the Opposition benches about irregularities in Mr Slipper’s conduct. Colleagues tend to forgive such failings, but adversaries never do, and one can expect all of the savagery of Labor’s Mal Colston fixation to be visited upon Mr Slipper from this point on.

Mal Colston was the Labor senator whom John Howard’s Coalition duchessed with the Senate deputy presidency in 1996.

Speaking this morning, Tony Abbott likened Labor’s recruitment of Mr Slipper to Whitlam’s sensational purchase of Vince Gair in 1974, in which the DLP senator was offered the ambassadorship to Ireland in order to free up his seat.

“This is a Government in crisis,” he told reporters, and sternly refused to discuss the Colston analogy on the grounds that it was “ancient history”.

(Abbott history, one may conclude, features a wrinkle in time around about the mid-’90s, when dinosaurs roamed the earth, and mudskippers edged from the primordial slime with nascent hopes of one day helping John Howard flog off a third of Telstra.)

2) A Christmas bonus for Anthony Albanese, who has been working on today’s coup for a bit and who – despite historically chilly relations with Julia Gillard – was this morning able to present her with something money can’t buy: An extra vote. I don’t know what Tim’s got planned, but it’s not going to beat Mr Albanese’s gift. Mr Albanese’s speech at yesterday’s censure motion – read it here – was also one of the strongest of any minister, all year.

3) A distinct devaluation in the Independent currency in the House of Reps. From now on, instead of having to win four extra votes for any given issue (out of Windsor, Oakeshott, Wilkie, Bandt, Katter and Crook) the Government will only have to win three. If today’s events had taken place this time last week, for example, the Government could have saved itself the $100 million or so it handed to Andrew Wilkie in concessions on the mining tax (which would additionally have saved them all the consequent fuss and bother it took to get the, er, Bandt back together)

Luck, or planning? A bit of both, really.

After a year and a half during which it often seemed as if some unseen cosmic hand was timing events of random misfortune to coincide most grievously with unforced strategic errors from the ALP, November 2011 seems to have brought a rearrangement of sorts.

Some vast pieces of legislation tucked away. Confusion to her enemies. The Prime Minister’s year has ended with the audacity of hope.

My second reason for posting from The Drum harks back to a comment on CA this week in response to James, about online news media:

More seriously, I occasionally dip into The Punch and The Drum online and they’re both good examples (particularly The Punch) of how quickly and eagerly online Australians resort to the same ‘competition to find the most puerile insult’.

If you are in a ‘purile insult’ mood, some comments can be funny … well most often in a Schadenfreude sort of way … and, yes, it’s not too sophisticated … and not at all Christian … and it becomes a farce for anyone wanting to post a thoughtful response.

Which makes me wonder what news organisations have in mind when they let these comments fly on their online outlets. Do they just equate numbers — no matter the quality of contribution — with evidence for their business model? Speculation for a non Wryday, I think …

THE WRITER: Dave Barry is a Pulitzer Prize-winning humor columnist for the Miami Herald.

Colonoscopy Journal:

I called my friend Andy Sable, a gastroenterologist, to make an appointment for a colonoscopy.

A few days later, in his office, Andy showed me a color diagram of the colon, a lengthy organ that appears to go all over the place, at one point passing briefly through Minneapolis.

Then Andy explained the colonoscopy procedure to me in a thorough, reassuring and patient manner.

I nodded thoughtfully, but I didn’t really hear anything he said, because my brain was shrieking, ‘HE’S GOING TO STICK A TUBE 17,000 FEET UP YOUR BEHIND!’

I left Andy’s office with some written instructions, and a prescription for a product called ‘MoviPrep,’ which comes in a box large enough to hold a microwave oven. I will discuss MoviPrep in detail later; for now suffice it to say that we must never allow it to fall into the hands of America ‘s enemies….

I spent the next several days productively sitting around being nervous.

Then, on the day before my colonoscopy, I began my preparation. In accordance with my instructions, I didn’t eat any solid food that day; all I had was chicken broth, which is basically water, only with less flavor.

Then, in the evening, I took the MoviPrep. You mix two packets of powder together in a one-liter plastic jug, then you fill it with lukewarm water. (For those unfamiliar with the metric system, a liter is about 32 gallons). Then you have to drink the whole jug. This takes about an hour, because MoviPrep tastes – and here I am being kind – like a mixture of goat spit and urinal cleanser, with just a hint of lemon.

The instructions for MoviPrep, clearly written by somebody with a great sense of humor, state that after you drink it, ‘a loose, watery bowel movement may result.’

This is kind of like saying that after you jump off your roof, you may experience contact with the ground.

MoviPrep is a nuclear laxative. I don’t want to be too graphic, here, but, have you ever seen a space-shuttle launch? This is pretty much the MoviPrep experience, with you as the shuttle. There are times when you wish the commode had a seat belt. You spend several hours pretty much confined to the bathroom, spurting violently. You eliminate everything. And then, when you figure you must be totally empty, you have to drink another liter of MoviPrep, at which point, as far as I can tell, your bowels travel into the future and start eliminating food that you have not even eaten yet.

After an action-packed evening, I finally got to sleep.

The next morning my wife drove me to the clinic. I was very nervous. Not only was I worried about the procedure, but I had been experiencing occasional return bouts of MoviPrep spurts. I was thinking, ‘What if I spurt on Andy?’ How do you apologize to a friend for something like that? Flowers would not be enough.

At the clinic I had to sign many forms acknowledging that I understood and totally agreed with whatever the heck the forms said. Then they led me to a room full of other colonoscopy people, where I went inside a little curtained space and took off my clothes and put on one of those hospital garments designed by sadist perverts, the kind that, when you put it on, makes you feel even more naked than when you are actually naked..

Then a nurse named Eddie put a little needle in a vein in my left hand. Ordinarily I would have fainted, but Eddie was very good, and I was already lying down. Eddie also told me that some people put vodka in their MoviPrep.

At first I was ticked off that I hadn’t thought of this, but then I pondered what would happen if you got yourself too tipsy to make it to the bathroom, so you were staggering around in full Fire Hose Mode. You would have no choice but to burn your house.

When everything was ready, Eddie wheeled me into the procedure room, where Andy was waiting with a nurse and an anesthesiologist. I did not see the 17,000-foot tube, but I knew Andy had it hidden around there somewhere. I was seriously nervous at this point.

Andy had me roll over on my left side, and the anesthesiologist began hooking something up to the needle in my hand.

There was music playing in the room, and I realized that the song was ‘Dancing Queen’ by ABBA. I remarked to Andy that, of all the songs that could be playing during this particular procedure, ‘Dancing Queen’ had to be the least appropriate.

‘You want me to turn it up?’ said Andy, from somewhere behind me.

‘Ha ha,’ I said. And then it was time, the moment I had been dreading for more than a decade. If you are squeamish, prepare yourself, because I am going to tell you, in explicit detail, exactly what it was like.

I have no idea. Really. I slept through it. One moment, ABBA was yelling ‘Dancing Queen, feel the beat of the tambourine,’ and the next moment, I was back in the other room, waking up in a very mellow mood.

Andy was looking down at me and asking me how I felt. I felt excellent. I felt even more excellent when Andy told me that It was all over, and that my colon had passed with flying colors. I have never been prouder of an internal organ.

On the subject of Colonoscopies…
Colonoscopies are no joke, but a physician claimed that the following are actual comments made by his patients (predominately male) while he was performing their colonoscopies:

1. Take it easy Doc. You’re boldly going where no man has gone before.
2. ‘Find Amelia Earhart yet?’
3. ‘Can you hear me NOW?’
4. ‘Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?’
5. ‘You know, in Arkansas , we’re now legally married.’
6. ‘Any sign of the trapped miners, Chief?’
7. ‘You put your left hand in, you take your left hand out…’
8. ‘Hey! Now I know how a Muppet feels!’
9. ‘If your hand doesn’t fit, you must quit!’
10. ‘Hey Doc, let me know if you find my dignity.’
11. ‘You used to be an executive at Enron, didn’t you?’
12. ‘God, now I know why I am not gay.’
13. ‘Could you write a note for my wife saying that my head is not up there?’

I have worked with engineers for many years and, as a group, I find their world view fascinating and very different from mine. Their capacity to store and retrieve technical data often leaves me flawed and more than a little green. However, and notwithstanding the imperative to avoid stereotyping, they are good to take the p out of.

Item 1

Item 2