Can you tell me how long it will take if you eat rat poison to see if it is going to affect you? Please e-mail me back. Because my niece ate some.

And other stupid questions that Slate‘s Explainer never answered in 2006.

It’s a widely known fact that I have no shame. I have even less so when it comes to theatre. Case in point: the climax of our current production, which simultaneously references Benny Hill, Scooby Doo, and A Charlie Brown Christmas. A certain boyfriend called me out for being so predictable and goofy, but I explained to him that anything can be funny when it’s done to “Yakety Sax”. And I’m right:

Circumcision is “not a magic bullet, but a potentially important intervention,” said Dr. Kevin M. De Cock…..

— New York Times

I would say I’m not gonna touch that, but history has proven me wrong.

To the naked eye, it might seem like today’s big newsmakers are the Saints, William “Icebox” Jefferson, and Harry “Road Block” Lee. In fact, however, another local personality has reared his moderately ugly, poorly face-lifted head halfway around the world: in Tehran, at a conference on the Holocaust organized by the Iranian Foreign Ministry’s Institute for Political and International Studies:

[Iran’s] foreign ministry had said that 67 foreign researchers from 30 countries were scheduled to take part. Among those speaking today are David Duke, the American white-supremacist politician and former Ku Klux Klan leader….

Mr. Duke’s remarks late this afternoon are expected to assert that no gas chambers or extermination camps were actually built during the war, on the ground that killing Jews that way would have been much too bothersome and expensive when the Nazis could have used much simpler methods, according to an advance summary of his speech published by the institute.

“Depicting Jews as the overwhelming victims of the Holocaust gave the moral high ground to the Allies as victors of the war, and allowed Jews to establish a state on the occupied land of Palestine,” Mr. Duke’s paper says, according to the summary.

—New York Times

The full speech is quite a read. Here’s a sample:

…I know that the Zionist extremists lead my country to catastrophe in the Mideast and elsewhere around the world. I know that the Palestinian people, the Lebanese people, even the American people have been sacrificed on the altar of the Holocaust. It is the chronic media and government playing of the Holocaust that has blinded our eyes to new holocausts and new outrages.

As a truly patriotic American I oppose Americans being killed or maimed by the thousands in Iraq in war not for America, but for Israel. I am here because I love my country and oppose those who lead America and the world to ruin on behalf of Zionism. In Iraq too, Americans and countless Iraqis have been sacrificed on the ideological altar of the Holocaust, for the Holocaust and its chronic recital is used the justification of any Israeli treachery or crime against humanity.

The Zionist influenced [sic] media in America and Europe is trying to mislead the U.S. and Iran toward a war that would be catastrophic for your country, for my country and for the world. Here too images of a Holocaust against Jews are used to justify and promote a terrible war against Iran that would constitute new Holocaust, one against the Iranian people and indeed for all of us in the world.

—DavidDuke.com

I’m sure the Jews and gypsies and homosexuals will all get their turn at the microphone, though.

OMG. Fresh from my inbox, the best spam subject line ever:

The animal hospital drama that led to our gut-wrenching decision to euthanize our cat took place less than a day after she’d been seen by our regular vet and sent home with a vitamin shot.

1. Our annual Chriskwaanzukkah trailer park musical extravaganza opens tomorrow night at One Eyed Jacks–which would explain (a) why I’ve been so quiet lately, and (b) why I’ve been giggling to myself. I won’t give away all our secrets, but picture this: a Christmas-themed semi-retarded biker-girl striptease and an all-Jew version of “Devil Went Down to Georgia”. Intrigued? Well, grab some tickets, woman! We ain’t just doin’ this for our health….

2. Somehow, between the singing and the DJing and the recording and the mixing, my sister found time to create a couple of new videos.

The Adventures of Fou Fou the Poodle #1
The Adventures of Fou Fou the Poodle #2

My theory? Comic sensibilities are genetic. Another theory: poodles are made for mockery. A third? Vicki Lawrence and Linda Hunt are the same person. I mean, have you ever seen them together?

3. Other titbits that recently raised one or both of my eyebrows: the New York Times has given a mild but firm low-grade bitchslap to a certain food writer from GQ, and the ultra-super-mega-hardcore Taliban–who’ve brought the world such memorable hits as “Public Executions of Women Who Wear Pants” and “No Fag is too Young for Hanging”–recently admitted it has a problem with man-boy love within its ranks. And as we all know, admitting that you have a problem is the first step toward being stoned to death.

I understand that some girls don’t wear panties. I also understand that wardrobe manfunctions can happen to anyone, thanks to gusts of wind, effusive pets, and the occasional stray doorknob. Furthermore, I understand that anyone who tends to consume vast quantities of fermented spirits and chunky rails of cocaine can occasionally become oblivious to things like the fact that a dress strap has fallen all the way to his or her elbow during a barrage of flashes and shouting from the paparazzi.

Still, I gotta ask: what the fuck is up with Britney? Does she think she’s the new spokemodel for Nair Brazilian Wax? Did K-Fed run off with her last microthong? Doesn’t she notice that the limo has gotten a little drafty? Bitch don’t even try to hide her cho-cha from the photog. Not that she’s really showing off, mind you, but she ain’t trying to cover up, neither. If I didn’t know better, I’d assume that Brittles was a drunk-ass white trash skank or that her handler had fallen asleep at the wheel.

Oh, right.

Note to self and others: I am not a patient person. I do not easily abide pussyfooting, bush-beating, or concensus-building. I want action, and I want it now, daddy. When things around me stall for no good reason, I can become very angry and occasionally abusive. It may seem juvenile, but I’m usually right, so stay out of my way.

<![CDATA[New Orleans doesn't always fare well with Conde Nast writers. Case in point: native son Nicholas Lemann (son of Uptown lawyer Tommy Lemann and stepson of novelist Sheila Bosworth), who's been particularly nasty to his hometown on the pages of New Yorker. But this recent GQ article by Alan Richman clearly takes the king cake:

I’ve never had much luck eating in New Orleans. I might be the only person who disliked Uglesich’s, a beloved seafood joint where I once stood in line for an hour in wretched early October heat for a po’boy containing a miserly quantity of oysters so overcooked they were like marbles. I believe most of the profits made by that establishment came about because of its periodic threats to close, which inevitably brought a rush of business. Uglesich’s finally shut down last year, to everybody’s dismay but my own.

—continued at GQ

Now, I know that New Orleans is far from perfect, and I’m more than happy to hear critiques of the city from people who know what they’re talking about. But when someone compares Creoles to non-existent “faerie folk, like leprechauns, rather than an indigenous race”, I think he deserves a swift kick to the nuts.

BTW, that article came to my attention via Pat Jolly, Gawker, and the Onion’s AV Club, which offers a delectable dissection of the piece.

And apologies to an especially dear friend at the New Yorker. You’re still a mensch in my book.

UPDATE: A considerate Metroblog reader pointed out this follow-up to the story, in which a New Orleans-based foodie interviews Richman by email. Despite being given the opportunity to clarify his arguments, Richman still comes across as a major dick.

Over in Orlando, folks are apparently tired of hearing about Katrina–specifically, tired of hearing about New Orleans and Katrina. They wonder why we’re getting all this attention when other cities and towns along the coast received far more damage than New Orleans did. They wonder why we weren’t better prepared, why folks didn’t leave, and why, oh, why there are so many goddamn telethons.

Well, lemme bring you up to speed, sister.

1. If you think you’re sick of hearing about Katrina, try living in New Orleans for a couple of weeks. Actually, make that days. I mean, we have to drive through it on the way to work, on the way to school, on the way to the grocery store. And on top of all the weedy yards and houses still marked with spray paint, we have to hear about it on the evening news, too? We have to read about it in the paper? We have to see it online on every media outlet and on the front of every CD package emblazoned with the words “Proceeds to benefit the recovery effort in New Orleans”? Enough already.

2. We understand that we’re not the only city affected by the storm. We know there are places that suffered much worse than New Orleans–places where there’s nothing left to salvage because even the slabs of houses were washed out to sea. We’re painfully aware of all that, and I think that each of us, to some degree, is experiencing a bit of survivor’s guilt. However, as much as I like to think I control everything in the universe, I have no power over the media. Nor do my friends and neighbors. Evacuees sitting around in Red Cross shelters don’t make front page news, and felled trees don’t generate much human interest. New Orleans won out because we had the best story: people in despair amid neighborhoods full of muck.

3. We were also an important story because we were a great example of the government’s inability to respond to disasters at the local, state, and national level. The human suffering that you and I and everyone else with electricity witnessed that week was not matched by an outpouring of concern from the government, and that disconnect made great news. This shouldn’t be surprising: it’s journalism 101.

4. Not to be snotty or anything, but New Orleans has generated a great deal of sympathy among Americans because we’ve given so much to the country over the past three centuries, from music to food to literature and more. No disrespect to Orlando, but, um, I don’t think losing Sea World would be as big of a story.

5. And just so you and everyone else in Orlando knows: New Orleans is not “GONE”. The parts of the city that most folks know and love–the Quarter, Uptown, and so on–are alive and well. I don’t know if you noticed, but that thing we call the Superdome reopened a few weeks ago. I think it was on TV. Don’t write us off.

I’m not even going to bother to mention some of the other crap discussed in those posts. How many times do we have to explain to others why residents didn’t leave–residents who didn’t own cars or even know friends with cars? How many times to we have to explain that the New Orleans/Katrina story was not so much about a natural disaster as it was about government ineptitude, from the Corps of Engineers’ faulty levees to Brownie’s botched rescue/recovery efforts? When you folks come up with something new to say, some new criticism that you wanna level at New Orleans or the media or whatever, by all means let us know, but until then, please, give us a break.