The scariest costume of all. What's with teenagers showing up for halloween, no costume, asking for my candy? Memo to teenagers 5'7" and taller: a hooded sweatshirt is not a costume unless you accessorize with dark sunglasses and a manifesto. Fuckers. So they got the Tootsie Pops. The Almond Joys and Kit-Kats went to the kids who took the time to have their parents buy them costumes.

The look of disappointment on two little girls' faces when I dropped a mini-pack of Rollos in their pillowcases almost made me feel sorry for hoarding some candy for myself.

Boo!



He's scary.

Happy Halloweeny.

Coco, what are you going to be for Halloween? "A ferocious tiger!"


Mr.Tibbs, what are you going to be for Halloween? "What I am for Halloween every year. A bad ass sonuvabitch."

Mmm...press conference Arrghaaaghahhargh.

Good times. Gonna sit on the couch, have a beer (Dominion Octoberfest), eat a fudgsicle, and listen to Fitzgerald's press conference.

Bye, Scooter. Huzzah!

Letter Opener of Death. Bushco took some time away from fighting terrrrrists to tell The Onion to stop using the presidential seal. The Onion's response: Don't mess with H-Dogg's crew.

Unnaturally Natural Hair.

10/25 Tyler Hall
it just isn't the same

10/27 UC Breakfast
What's with the hair, [Unnatural Man]?

Again, you can see the disappointment. The bleach blonde hair and the plastic complexion amplified each other. Without one, the other wouldn't be quite as Unnatural. Sadly, the hair stayed the same color for the rest of the year.

It would be another two weeks before we'd spot him again. But as you'll see, we made it worth the wait.

Rumors. If true....

Plamegate. So maybe it'll finally come to a head in the next couple of days. Looking through the archives, I came across this post in which I refer to Bob Novak as a "piece of crap masquerading as a human." See, I'm a reasonable person. That post links to this 2/25/04 item:

Can Robert Novak succeed on the stage by playing the outraged husband of a CIA agent whose identity as a deep-cover spy had been revealed by a certain syndicated columnist?

The answer will become apparent March 6 when Novak dresses up as retired diplomat Joseph Wilson to perform before Vice President Cheney and some 500 other guests at the annual white-tie Gridiron Dinner at the Capitol Hilton.

In pursuing his day job as a nationally syndicated columnist, Novak identified Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, as a CIA operative working in the field of weapons counterproliferation. The July 14 column has triggered a full-press FBI probe to find the leaker, amid much journalistic soul-searching.

Novak swears he’ll never tell anybody, including Wilson, who will also be at the dinner watching Novak (aka Joe Wilson) sing of his sad plight to the tune of “Once I Had a Secret Love.”

Of course, Novak apparently did squawk, cooperating with Fitzgerald from the beginning. And Cheney is up to his eyeballs in the investigation.

What fond memories those must be for Cheney and Novakula.

El hombre unnatural.

10/25 UC entrance
natural haircolor--somewhat disappointed

The Man had changed from his bleach blonde look to a more natural looking brown. The theory was that this might be in an attempt to match Bryan Adams' hair. No matter what the reason, it was a bit of a letdown.

You'll take your $5.15, and you'll like it. Congress once again decides that the minimum wage is really far too generous as it is.

WASHINGTON - Senate proposals to raise the minimum wage were rejected Wednesday, making it unlikely that the lowest allowable wage, $5.15 an hour since 1997, will rise in the foreseeable future.

A labor-backed measure by Sen. Edward Kennedy (news, bio, voting record) would have raised the minimum to $6.25 over an 18-month period. A Republican counterproposal would have combined the same $1.10 increase with various breaks and exemptions for small businesses.
.....
Republican opponents, echoing the arguments of business groups, said higher minimum wages can work against the poor if they force small businesses to cut payrolls or go out of business.

"Mandated hikes in the minimum wage do not cure poverty and they clearly do not create jobs," said Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., who offered the Republican alternative.

Oh, Mike Enzi, you're just too cute. True, raising the minimum wage won't cure poverty. No single piece of legislation will. But rising wages will lift some out of poverty, though even a stingy increase of $1.10 will still be insufficient. A raise of $1.10 would amount to $2288 more per year, still leaving a family of three at 15% below the poverty line, and a family of four at 30% below the poverty line.

Enzi is correct in noting that raising the minimum wage does not necessarily create jobs across the board; however, it is linked to increased employment among non-white women, and there is no evidence to suggest that raising the minimum wage leads to job loss. As for the talking point that raising the minimum wage will hurt small businesses, there's just no solid evidence to support that.

But the poor don't pay much federal income tax, right? And living on the edge must be exciting. Lucky duckies!

Late Night Unnatty.

10/20 path near Swem [library]
1:45 a.m. -- had on his glasses

I have no idea what I was doing at 1:45 near the library. Surely it wasn't because I was doing work--the library itself wasn't 24 hours, and I didn't get hooked on the study lounge (the hippest place to be at 1:45 on a Wednesday night/Thursday morning) until sophomore year. So this must have been quite Unnatural.

The Yeti.

Intrepid reader said:

I have heard talk of this Unnatural Man, and not unlike the yeti, I have never seen photographic evidence. You got that in your folder??
Kristin | 09.28.05 - 10:40 am | #

By this time during the fall of 1994, we had become most intrigued by Unnatural Man. And like so many others with pathologies before us, we began to collect trophies. Unnatural Trophies, you could say. One treasure would be a picture of the Man himself. But it's not like we could just go up to him and say, "Hi, you don't know us, but we've been tracking you for the last month and a half. How about a picture?" No, we would need to be craftier than that.

Knowing that Unnatural Man typically ate at the University Center dining hall in the evenings, we began taking a camera to dinner with us. All we would need to do is secure a table close to the cashiers in order to keep a look out. This would also position us such that most people would have to walk by or near our table. When, and if, the Man showed up, we'd just pretend to be taking a picture of people at the table, capturing him in the background. We weren't Monroe Scholars for nothing, folks.

True to form, Unnatural showed up, and we readied the camera. As he walked by, someone snapped the picture, and we celebrated with our Blue Plate Specials.

All that was left was to get the film developed, and the picture blown up poster-size. When I picked up the film, I rifled through the prints, and here is what I found:



Only one word to describe it. Unnatural.

Or not Ari. Raw Story says that flipper is John Hannah, a senior aide to Crashcart who was "on loan" from Bolton. That'll work also. And that still allows for the possibility that Ari could be indicted for his own involvement.

Flipper. According to Raw Story, sources have identified the senior cooperating witness in the CIA leak investigation. No word yet on who is cooperating, but one possibility is our old dear pal, Ari Fleischer. Ari isn't a longtime Shrub loyalist, he only joined the cabal after Libby Dole dropped out of the primaries in 2000. He does, however, have ties to the Bush crime family dating back to when he worked as Poppy's deputy communications director.

I don't think it's Colin Powell. Lots of people think this will be his great redemption, but I doubt it. And whoever they flipped must have been involved, and I'd believe that Colin wasn't intimately tied up in this. And I don't think that Rove would have flipped to save his own ass because he probably still believes that he's too smart for Fitzgerald. And Andy Card is probably too busy getting hamburgers.

Anyway. If Ari has been flipped, that would certainly explain this bit from the Wikipedia entry on Asshat.

Fleischer has been suggested as being a second leaker in the Valerie Plame affair, in which one or more members of the White House staff leaked Plame's identity to the press. Plame was a covert agent with non-official (NOC) cover status in the CIA and the publication of her name resulted in her cover being blown.1

On July 18, 2005, Bloomberg reported that in his sworn testimony before the grand jury investigating the leak, Fleischer denied having seen a memo circulating on Air Force One on July 7, 2003 which named Plame in connection to Wilson's mission and which identified her as a CIA covert agent. However, a former Bush Administration official also on the plane testified to having seen Fleischer perusing the document.[2] [3]

Columnist Robert Novak, who published Plame's name on July 14, 2003, made a call to Fleischer on July 7, 2003 before Fleischer's trip to Africa with the President. It is unclear whether Fleischer returned Novak's call.[4]

Ari's lawyers haven't returned any calls for a long time. Ari also has a young child, so he probably isn't looking for an extended stay in the pen.

No matter what, after two years of following this case, it'll be interesting to see what comes of it all.

Paragraphs that make me smile. Via Bloomberg News.

In an interview yesterday, Wilson said that once the criminal questions are settled, he and his wife may file a civil lawsuit against Bush, Cheney and others seeking damages for the alleged harm done to Plame's career.

If they do so, the current state of the law makes it likely that the suit will be allowed to proceed -- and Bush and Cheney will face questioning under oath -- while they are in office. The reason for that is a unanimous 1997 U.S. Supreme Court decision ruling that Paula Jones' sexual harassment suit against then-President Bill Clinton could go forward immediately, a decision that was hailed by conservatives at the time.

Not that being under oath would keep those jokers from lying.

More Unnatural Man.

10/16 UC Dinner*
Was behind Clarence on line--got take out

10/17 UC entrance*
Clad in denim, walking quickly

These two entries bring the total to 7 or 8 different people who had logged sitings of Unnatural Man. He was gaining quite the following.

Eleven years ago tomorrow, I took my camera to dinner in hopes of getting a picture of the Man. Did we see him? Were we able to snap a picture? If so, what of it? Tune in to find out.

Yesterday in Unnatural History.

10/13 Landrum Dr.
Love the Bryan Adams jacket.

He really did have a denim jacket with a Bryan Adams design on the back, probably a list of tour dates or an album cover. I can't remember.

First the license plates. Then the jacket. Can you say...Unnatural?

Pulling back the curtain. Today's photo-op exposed. The mainstream media would not have embarrassed Shrub like this in the past. It's not like this is particularly a new revelation or anything, that he's kept in a bubble and only allowed to interact in carefully scripted venues. They just went along while the Chimperor walked down the street naked as a jaybird.

How can you tell when Scotty McMuffin is lying? His lips are moving.

Bush did let a little truth out though during this photo-op in saying, "I wish I could be there to see you face to face and thank you personally. Probably a little early for me to go to Tikrit. Perhaps one of these days the situation will be such that I’ll be able to get back to Iraq."

Does that mean there isn't a square in Tikrit named after Shrub?

Happy Anniversary. Happy Anniversary to Andrea Mackris and Bill O'Reilly. A year ago today, Mackris sued O'Reilly for sexual harassment claiming that he repeatedly talked to her about phone sex, vibrators, threesomes, masturbation, the loss of his virginity, and sexual fantasies. And, of course, falafel.

This Day in Unnatural History.

10/12 UC Dining Room
Oink! Oink! Take a breather!

The Man was eating unnaturally fast that night, just shoveling the food into his mouth. As for me, I was probably having a chicken sandwich, fries, and a Klondike bar.

Busted. Oh, Fristy. Where's a person in a persistent vegetative state to exploit when you need one?

Busted. Oh, Scooter. You're going to look good in stripes.

$200 Billion and counting. Just noticed that the cost of war counter in the sidebar hit $200 Billion today. That's a lot of donuts.

Department of Waaaah! Apparently Patrick Fitzgerald, the prosecutor in the Plame case, is just a big bully. I absolutely love the idea of someone from this administration accusing someone else of being a bully. That'd be like if my older brother accused me of not playing fairly in whiffleball when we were kids.

If indictments are handed down, it'll be the type of feel-good moment like the Scut Farkus Affair.

The Unnatural Files, Roanoke edition.

10/8 Valley View Mall, Roanoke, VA
"Oh shit, oh shit, it's him!" Unnatural!

This sighting occured while home for fall break. For some reason, probably because there was nothing else to do, a friend and I decided to head over to Valley View Mall. Probably to see if the Mall guy was there---this guy, probably in his 30s, who was always walking around the mall in a t-shirt, black pants, thick-rimmed glasses, and a shaved head. Sure enough, he was. But as we're walking along, I saw someone with a plastic complexion and bleach-blonde hair. No way that it was Unnatty. But it was. And so in a hushed voice, I said, "Oh shit, oh shit, it's him!" "Who?," my friend asked. "Unnatural Man!," I said. What on earth brought Unnatural Man to Valley View Mall at the exact same time that I was there? And why would he even be in Roanoke? He was from California, so I could see why he might not go home for break. But Roanoke? Most unnatural.

This day (and yesterday) in Unnatural History.

10/6 UC Breakfast
dressed up...court date? child molestation?

10/6 OD Parking Lot
New tags on the Unnatural Car...using his tool.

10/6 James Blair Dr.
Very cold, wearing shorts...very unnatural.

10/7 UC dining room*
Very polite.

The 6th must have been a very unnatural day for seeing our Man. And just what were the new tags that he was putting on his car? See for yourself from this picture taken outside of the AMF Williamsburg Bowl.



"BRY ADMZ"....Bryan Adams. Yes, that Bryan Adams. Unnatural, no? This is a particular theme that will unfold over time.

(* logged by someone not me)

Buyer's Remorse. Bush approval at 37%.

And if the scuttlebutt on Plamegate turns out to be accurate, I can only imagine how low he can go.

Opening the Unnatural Files.

9/27 UC Dining Room
He had cheesecake.

9/28 Swem Library
Very studious...hmmm....

9/28 Sunken Garden
Walks funny--ass sticking out

9/29 UC Post Office
Has a male friend named Shannon*

9/29 Internet
Likes to compute*

9/20 UC Breakfast
Like fruit*

10/3 Swem Library
Sam's 1st sighting*

10/3 OD Fire Drill
Ben's 1st; pant-wearing habits unnatural

10/4 UC Breakfast
slacks, shirt, & tie...for waffles?

10/5 James Blair Dr.
Where's the flood?

Unnatural Fact of the Day: Unnatural Man's majors were Math and French.

By "Where's the flood," I meant that he was wearing highwater pants.
(* logged by someone other than me)

From The Onion. Bob Marley Rises from Grave to Free Frat Boys from Bonds of Oppresion.

WILLIAMSBURG, VA—In an unprecedented effort to fight injustice, reggae music legend Bob Marley, dead since 1981, rose from his grave in Jamaica early Sunday to free his most devoted followers, American college fraternity members, "from the bonds of oppression."

Marley's recordings, which originally raised awareness of the Rastafarian faith and the plight of underprivileged Jamaicans and Africans, have taken on an even deeper meaning as the Greek fraternal system, a maligned, misunderstood minority group itself, has fervently embraced the driving, soulful music.

Minutes after his resurrection, the dreadlocked spirit materialized in the backyard of Epsilon Iota, the Sigma Nu chapter of the College of William and Mary in Virginia. Radiating a transcendent aura, Marley addressed the college's recent campus-wide ban on bonfires.

"I appeared to I fraternity brothers to tell them be strong," said Marley, standing in front of hundreds of hooting fraternity members. "I say don't let dean of students, Henry Riegert, fool ya, or even try to school ya. We'll get that bonfire going in time for da mixer, mon. A fire a man's own business."

[MORE]

(kudos to HVH for the link)

Miers. Holy crap, this is pathetic. And this is well, it's something.