Dowbrigade

LOS
ANGELES (Reuters) – Paris Hilton, the 22-year-old socialite whose
unclothed exploits made headlines last year, found new, fully-dressed
fame on Tuesday.

The hotel heiress was named worst dressed woman of 2003 by Hollywood’s
self-appointed fashion guru Mr. Blackwell, topping a list that included
singers Britney Spears, Madonna, Shania Twain and Courtney Love.

"Grab the blinders, here comes Paris. From cyber disgrace to red carpet
chills — she’s the vapid Venus of Beverly Hills!" quipped Blackwell.

Second place on the closely-followed annual list went to Madonna and Britney
Spears, who Blackwell dubbed the "Kissin Cousins of Couture Crimes" after
their much publicized smooch on a music awards show last year.

Many of his perennial victims — Cher, Barbra Streisand and various members
of the British royal family — failed to make it to the list.

The worst-dressed list was rounded out by pop star Jessica Simpson (5th), singer Celine Dion (6th) “a half-sequined scarecrow, half-gaudy acrobat,” rap star Missy Elliott (7th), actress Melanie Griffith (8th), singer Courtney Love (9th), and actress Lara Flynn Boyle, who was derided for turning up to an awards show dressed as a ballerina.

from Reuters

A hedgehog? A rat? No, the creature on the ledge at East 35th Street was
an opossum, not such a rarity in New York.

What was that furry creature parked yesterday
on a ledge at 135 East 35th Street? A big rat? A cat? A small bear? For
nearly eight hours, a quiet corner in Murray Hill was transformed into
a kind of temporary zoo, as passers-by stopped to gawk and guess the
identity of the long-snouted cat-size animal that paced along a narrow
stone ledge about nine feet over a brownstone garden, sniffing, shaking
and yawning.

"I was thinking it was a badger, in honor of Operation Badger," said
Jennifer Gould, who may have been the first to spot it, at 7:30 a.m. (see
following story)

"I thought someone had put a giant statue of a rat in front of the
building," said
Lynn Peraza, owner of the topless club Flashdancers, who wore a multicolored
fur coat. The animal was, in fact, an opossum – and not entirely an alien
in Manhattan.."

from the New York Times

Asked
Monday about former Treasury Secretary Paul H. O’Neill’s allegation that
the administration was preparing to attack Iraq from its first days in
office,President Bush told reporters that "we were dealing with Desert
Badger or flyovers and fly-betweens and looks, and we were fashioning
policy along those lines."

4. He’s confusing his foxes and his badgers — Operation Desert Fox was
the name for a four-day bombing campaign against Iraq in December 1998.

from the
Washington Post

Alphaville’s
a tough town, the sort of place where even the street-smart are rarely
safe and newcomers are often eaten alive. You can call the
cops, but they usually don’t arrive in time. That’s why so many Alphaville
residents seek justice by hiring guys like Jeremy Chase.

He runs a
band of thugs who’ll gladly deal out ugly punishments for the right
price. Chase, a 26-year-old resident of Sacramento, runs the Sim Mafia
 thesimmafia.com), a gang of digital enforcers for a digital world. They
lay down the law inside the Sims Online, a multiplayer computer game
run by Electronic Arts. "Our job is to basically take those complaints
from the normal citizens of the game, who can’t go to EA because EA won’t
do anything about it, and do an eye-for-an-eye for them," Chase
said.

If a player feels his character, or Sim, is being ill treated and can
get no justice from the game operators at EA, he can arrange to have
bad things happen to rival players, by approaching a local Mafia and
ponying up some of the game’s currency, called simoleons.

by Hiawatha Bray in the Boston Globe

Korean and Japanese Internet users are swiping at each other, posing
such images as the, "Korea as dog eating country" on Japanese websites,
while "54th anniversary celebrating the day nuclear bomb hit Japan" stamp
(below) is posted in Korean cyber space.

from the Marmot

Brazilians, laid back and proud of their heritage, are understandably
upset at the newest Homeland Security brainstorm. Seeing as none of the
9/11 terrorists, in fact none of the terrorists or terror suspects identified
thus far, have been Brazilian, speak Portuguese, or have even VISITED
Brazil, how does it make sense that every Brazilian tourist, businessman,
student, man, woman, child or grandmother, must be photographed and fingerprinted before
being admitted to the US.?

They decided that two can play the Gestapo game.  Starting last
week, all AMERICANS entering Brazil need to be photographed and fingerprinted.  A
nice symmetrical service gesture, redolent with ridiculous logic and
innate fair play, but somehow uncharacteristically and unacceptably rude for our
southerly fellow Americans, and beside a severe drag on much appreciated tourism from
the north.

So to ameliorate the negative effects of the gesture, US arrivals at
the Rio de Janeiro airport are getting a packet of souvenirs and gifts
along with their mug shots! Think Stormbanfueher Ridge would consider something similar to
encourage foreign tourists to keep arriving on our shores? Maybe we could
give them those clever little models of the Statue of Liberty, except
with a lamp that lights up with the different colors of the terror alert
levels…..

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (AP) – American tourists arriving in Brazil must
still be photographed and fingerprinted, but those who enter through
Rio de Janeiro are getting flowers, jewelry and T-shirts along with the
red tape.

"This is our way of saying that Rio de Janeiro loves American tourists,
no matter what," said Fuad Atala, spokesman for the Rio de Janeiro
tourism board.

from the AP

Is it just us, or is Howard Dean starting to look more and more like
the sacrificial lamb, like the golden goose, or like the fatted calf. Little
Hansel being fattened up for the Wicked Witch. Do we detect a subtle undercurrent
of opportunistic defeatism in the camps of
the other candidates?

After all, it is looking increasingly likely that all Dean is in a position
to win is a chance to go down in ignominious and career-ending defeat.
Recent American history has not been kind to losing Presidential Candidates.
Gore has turned into a cranky and eccentric uncle, apparently permanently
unhinged by the vicious sucker punch that knocked him out of the Presidency
when he was ahead on all of the scorecards.

Before Gore, the loser was Bob Dole, reduced to doing Viagra ads. Before
Dole, in ’92 it was Bush Sr. and Dan Quayle, and after that election
they both retired from politics for all practical purposes. Dukakis and
Mondale before them? Don’t make me laugh.

In fact, the last loser to go on later to reach the ultimate
prize was Richard Nixon, and we all know how that sad and twisted tale
turned out now, don’t we?

So is it any wonder if most of the losing candidates in this losers
rodeo end up shedding crocodile tears and, with secret relief, slinking
away to lick their wounds, husband their resources, and plot their return
to
the fray
in
’08.  Whereas the "winner" will end up sloppy road kill under the
Cheny-Rove tire tracks, and disappear forever into the pages of history.

The bottom line is that Americans hate a loser. They don’t like having
them around, reminding us of defeat by their
very presence.  Better
to move on, to new faces, fresh meat, optimistic promises, and unrealized
potential.

The Dowbrigade has a feeling that the field is going to narrow considerably
in coming weeks, after the first few primaries, as some of the lesser
candidates start running out of money and gas.  Several of the big
names will probably go through the motions up until the convention.  Then
it’ll be: "Gosh darn that Howard, looks like he has the votes to be the
candidate. Whelp, we did all we could. Now we’ve got to get out there and help him try to beat Bush." Yeah, good luck guys.