Aspersions on His Asparagus

In Food News, Eric Holder was grilled and peppered by the Judiciary Committee.  A certain talking cantaloupe, no wait, it was Louie Gohmert,was complaining about Aspersions on his Asparagus. The nerve of some people... wait, what does that mean? Stephen thought there needs to be more hearings scheduled. "The more I digest this, the worse it smells." Aspersions... Asparagus...

In Energy News, eagles are being killed by wind turbines. Stephen is upset by this because people aren't upset about this. For example, if you mess with big oil, you know, have an oil spill and kill thousands of birds and other wild life, people will be upset. But break big wind an d people just laugh at you.

In Plastic News, did you know that you can buy one of those cheap MakerBots, make a head statue (bust) of Stephen Colbert and use it as a gun? No, you can't - just pulling your leg. But you can download instructions from the internet about making your own plastic gun.

And lastly, in Skeletal Biology Lab News, it turns out that humans are very good at sweating and that makes us superior to other life forms. Stephen is superior because he is wearing toe shoes. (Personally, I think it looks like you are wearing monkey feet, but whatever.)

Dr. Daniel Lieberman was Stephen's guest last Thursday. He is an actual Professor of Biological Sciences at Harvard University. He taught us to run barefoot, in that he said try running barefoot. It's harder to push yourself over your limit when running barefoot, because your feet will tell you to take it easy. Your feet hurt, so you stop running. This strategy works well for Stephen. Exercise hurts him, so he doesn't do it.

An amazing testament to how humans are superior really caught Stephen's attention. Turns out that having large butts (unlike some of the other primates) means you are less likely to fall on your face. Your gluteus maximus acts as a counter balance and this saves face a lot. Luckily for me, I rarely fall on my face!

There are many other ways that humans are superior. For example, because we have evolved, the necessity for underwear became apparent and sure enough, someone invented underwear. Lucky for all of us!

How Do You Most Often Communication With People?

Last night was one of those nights when there was so much news and commentary on The Colbert Report my head was spinning. It still is.

First off, the First Congressional District in South Carolina. The winner of the GOP Primary there was Mark Sanford. You may remember him as the "Appalachian Hiker with extremely poor sense of direction." Yes, he's the former South Carolina Governor who was unfaithful to his wife and betrayed the public trust by leaving the state, even the country, and going to see his mistress down in Argentina. Stephen compared his good fortune at getting a second chance  in politics to that of Silvio Berlusconi of Italy.

Who else is running to represent the First District? You might know this. Elizabeth Colbert Busch! Stephen's sister! Stephen whipped up a sparkling poster for her which is quite nice. It has all the right colors - red, white, And blue. It has stars on it and symbols from the flag of South Carolina on it, so I'm pretty sure that means she will win.

Stephen was not even going to mention this political race until Morning Joe basically brought it to Stephen. Morning Joe had his good buddy Mark Sanford on for an infomercial and said that Elizabeth Colbert Busch has her own show - The Colbert Report. The love fest was great but then they talked about Mark Sanford's honesty about his lies to the people of South Carolina. Stephen thinks he would have been just as honest if no one had caught him back when he was hiking. My thought was that age old Fortune Cookie saying, "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me." I don't know if they ever got around to discussing the trait Mark Sanford seems to be the most proud of, his humility.

Stephen went on to endorse Elizabeth Colbert Busch and to give credit to Morning Joe. It was because of Morning Joe that Stephen was inspired to make such a bold endorsement.

Good friend of the show and proud owner of the complete Petticoat Junction DVD Boxed Set Louie Gohmert had some views on gun control and gay marriage. He also is somewhat of a numbers person, often comparing the number 10 to the number 9 and the number 11. Stephen continued on with the numbers, even dabbling in some basic algebra. You know, If A=B and B=C, then, well something about bees and bacon and then sheep and zoos.

FUN SURVEY

Now comes the fun part of the show. The RNC is going to bond with young people by giving them a survey. It's over at Survey Monkey, the most trusted simian data collection service. Stephen even had a photograph of one of the monkeys who most likely is helping with the survey. The Survey Monkey had on a white lab coat, so that makes it legitimate. You can go over and take the survey. Oops, I take that back. If you are under 30 years of age you can take it. If you are 30 years of age or older, don't go to the survey here at www.surveymonkey.com/s/8PXHD8Y. (update: sadly, survey is closed.)

Lucky for us, Stephen is qualified to take the survey. He had some fave questions, for example, number 36. "Do you think that the Republican Party discriminates against people? If so, which people?" There were many options there, but Stephen pointed out that White People was the only option that the survey refers to as people. (Stephen marked the box for "The Republican Party does NOT discriminate against anyone.")

Stephen's absolute favorite question was number 38. "What is your sexual orientation?" One of the options was "In the closet." Stephen pointed out how smart it is to mark that on a Republican survey. Logically though, you can't mark "In the Closet" because then you would be out of the closet. Stephen really knows his way around all the intricacies of the survey.

I would point out some personal favorites of my own while there is a commercial airing. (It's not airing right now. I'm watching The Colbert Report on TiVo, but if I was watching live, then there would be a commercial now, but never mind.)

#3 is simple. It just asks for your zip code. This is extremely important. Later on, when they figure out what message will make you vote for Republicans, you will get stuff in the mail or hear commercials on the radio in your home town or see TV ads in your marketing area that will reflect what you want to hear. So be sure to fill in your zip code. Don't use 90210 unless you live in Beverly Hills.

#5 is about how you get your political information. I thought there should have been a separate category for "The Colbert Report" but there is a box for television, so I guess that will do.

#6 is great because of the creative use of words. "How do you most often communication with people?"

#14 was tricky for me. I couldn't decide on whether to choose the option with "want support them" or "want to support them." (Good thing they didn't have a question about speaking English. The grammar or spelling or proofreading is a bit shaky on some of these questions.)

#20 is maybe the most important question. It has a box for you to write your answer in. It asks, "What would a Republican have to do or say in order for you to vote for her/him?" This is where #3 about zip code comes in. You write down what a Republican has to say in order for you to vote for him/her. If a lot of people in the same zip code say the same thing, then that is what the Republican will say in that zip code area and voila! you vote for him/her. Good for you/he/she/it!

#22 the nice question. One wonders why there wasn't a nasty option.

#26 the answer is no. The Republican Party does not seem like fun. Only fun. is fun.

#41 you can ignore this unless you live in Washington State. It asks if you voted for Jay Inslee for governor or Rob McKenna. I don't know why they would ask that unless it is because it was such a close election and they think that can somehow help them figure out how to appeal to young folks.

#50 is your chance to say anything you want. (Hey, be nice.) It is optional. Of course the whole survey is optional, especially if you are old. Remember it's just for youngsters. If you can actually remember watching Petticoat Junction on TV, you are too old.

Anyway, that survey link again in case you lost it is www.surveymonkey.com/s/8PXHD8Y.(update: sadly survey is closed.)

A.C. GRAYLING

Stephen's guest last night (and of course by now it is tomorrow so I mean the night before last night) was A.C. Grayling. His latest book is "The God Argument - The Case Against Religion and for Humanism."

Stephen was worried that Humanism is similar to Veganism. You can see how that would be troubling. Stephen admitted, "I am delicious." So, yes he would be worried if the two 'isms are related. But actually, humanism is an attitude about how we live a moral life. As you could expect, Stephen defended religion while A.C. Grayling defended what could be called a more natural form of morality. A.C. Grayling even reached all the say back to Socrates for some moral teachings. Of course, things didn't end well for Socrates.

Global Bacon Shortage

Who's talking about the upcoming bacon shortage? Who isn't??? But personally, I don't see what the problem is. Right now bacon comes in lengths from about seven inches to ten inches. But for a BLT, that's too long, so I end up cutting or breaking the bacon strips into two pieces and then overlapping them a bit on the toast. If we had this bacon shortage, the pieces would be about five to six inches long, much better fit on the toast to make that BLT. And for bacon and eggs, still a good deal. When I have a fried egg, the bacon always sticks out past the egg and the plate looks unbalanced. So, I am going on record for saying that I would like the bacon strips to be shorter. You can still eat just as much bacon by eating eight or nine pieces instead of the usual six or seven. So, don't worry about the coming Aporkalypse. Not going to be a problem. One thing that would be bad would be if everyone got all upset, went to the grocery store to stock up on bacon, and in doing so created a scenario in which there was not enough bacon to go around. Now that would be a problem. Forget about the whether bacon strips are short or long, We should be worried about not having enough bacon.

Speaking of Louie Gohmert, the Ottoman Empire. That's right, Louie Gohmert is sounding the alarm about the soon-to-be-in-place Ottoman Empire. When I was growing up, that's all we heard about on the news. Stephen told us it collapsed in 1922, but can we be sure. All I can say is, it's good that Louie Gohmert is watching out for us.

We all know that Stephen is a man of faith. And it is obvious every day that he is one of those faithful people who believe in living his faith, not just mouthing it. Because of a recent campaign of prayer, Stephen treated us to his prayer cap, his prayer hands, (Jesus #1) and a nice prayer on the show. That should make things better.

Jim Holt, for some reason, was the guest on The Colbert Report. I wonder why. Stephen had lots of questions for him, lots. He took off the kid gloves, if you know what I mean. Some of the questions from the interview also came from the interviewee, not the interviewer. I present some of the questions. Luckily, there will not be a test, so don't worry.

"Why does the world exist?" "Why does 'Why Does the World Exist' exist?" That was a better question and it was from Stephen. "When was the last time you created everything?" If you want answers, you can buy Jim Holt's book, "Why Does the World Exist? - An Existential Detective Story." I don't know if it will have the answers you want, but since it is a detective story, it should have at least some answers.

"Who We Are As A Nation"

You can view the entire speech by Senator John McCain here.

King of Magic

Pop Quiz for you. Which one of the following people did not appear on the show tonight?

A) Representative Louie Gohmert
B) Jimmy Fallon
C) Anderson Cooper
D) David Copperfield

If you guessed Rush Limbaugh, you didn't even look at the choices. Sheesh.

The answer is A) Representative Louis Gohmert. Although Stephen did talk about Louie Gohmert, he was not technically on the show. If the name seems familiar but you can't remember why, go back and read about him at Manatee of the Airwaves.

But as for who really showed up tonight... well, Stephen's BFF, I mean, Best Friend for Six Months, Jimmy Fallon was there to chat about the good times in the last six months. And then the truth hit both of them. Six months is up. They are no longer Best Friends. Nothing left for them but to be --- gasp --- Eternal Enemies for Six Months. However it's not as bad as it seems. Both of these superstars are up for an Emmy in the same category and yet Jimmy Fallon is man enough to say that he hopes Stephen wins and Stephen is man enough to say "Yeah."

Next, and I totally did not see this coming, Anderson Cooper was there on the show. Not on the show, but in the audience that was on the show. Okay, it was just a short walk-on bit where he didn't actually walk on, but he was there and he did talk and he didn't laugh so that almost qualifies as being a guest.

And then, almost as if by magic, David Copperfield dazzled us with his ability to sit and talk with Stephen. We can all agree that Stephen is remarkable, talented, with has many awards. But even Stephen acknowledged that David Copperfield is amazing and remarkable and impressive. And Stephen is not the only one who thinks so. Check out Wikipedia about David Copperfield. And look at this latest news to see who is the first-ever King of Magic.

It was a typical interview for Stephen and David Copperfield. And that made me extremely happy. I was worried that Copperfield would make Stephen disappear and not bring him back. It would have made future episodes of The Colbert Report very boring. Anyway, David Copperfield wrote the foreword for the book, "Brainworks the Mind-Bending Science of How You See, What You Think and Who You Are," written by Michael S. Sweeney and printed by National Geographic. It sounds intriguing and I think I might go out and buy it.

If magic is of interest to you, go to Colbert Nation and watch tonight's show online if you did not see it on the TV machine. You can see Stephen make a coin disappear. Yes, he makes an actual coin actually disappear!

Then, in what can only be described as a mix of magic, mind control and psychic abilities, Stephen predicted what card I would be thinking of. Hint: It's the Ace of Hearts.

Manatee of the Airwaves

Join Now!

Of course that could mean two different things from tonight's show. First of all and most important, if you join Stephen's Colbert Super PAC, and if you donate some money, cha-ching, your name will at some time crawl across the bottom of the screen while The Colbert Report is on the TV Machine in what Stephen calls a Cash Crawl.

The other thing it could mean is to Join Now at Newt Gingrich's website. But the really strange thing about that is that when Stephen was showing us what New Gingrich's website looked like, it was a bit different from what it looks like now, just a short time later.

For one thing, the photo is a bit different. Gingrich looks happier now. He's wearing a blue shirt and red tie, not quite as good as wearing the American Flag for a tie, but still, it is the right color combination. And it has a lot of donate buttons, but one of the buttons is different. Instead of saying Donate Now, it says Join Now! Did that get changed because Stephen talked about it tonight? Or is it just a case of website updates occurring at random times?

Also, the wording is different. Instead of saying "Support Newt today to help make sure our winning message reaches all voters" it says "Join the Campaign to get the latest news, announcements, event information and exclusive updates." And of course, the website I'm looking at now has a very nice American flag in the background instead of the word Conservative (okay okay, onservative but I assume it would be Conservative if I could see the whole word).

Now that makes me wonder. You can "join now" and get exclusive updates. But if anyone can join now, and it looks like everyone can, it doesn't seem very exclusive to me.

Great, now Stephen has gotten me so interested that I'm looking all over the Gingrich website. Now I'm looking at the Gear you can Get. And before you say, "whoopie I wanna get some gear" you need to know there are flaws, well some flaws. You can get a yard sign, but when I look at it, it's so small it would work out better as a Blue Hat sign. But ouch! Those two metal poles would need to be poked into your hat and thus into your head. And then there's t-shirts, but they are all wrinkly at the bottom. There are also Newt buttons, but they are actually more like body armor. I'm looking at the images on the website right now and the buttons are bigger than the t-shirts! It would get the message across to everyone who sees you, because the button stretches all the way across your chest. If it was up to me, I would have the buttons be smaller so that they just took up a small amount of space on the t-shirts. I would make the yarn signs much bigger, about 30 times bigger than the hat.

()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()

Okay, you want to look at the Gear, don't you. Fine, I'll put the link up. But, you have to promise to play the guessing game that I made up. It works on my computer so I hope it will work on yours. Go to the Newt Store (not the one at the Nature Center) and pick one item, any item. Memorize its location. Hit the refresh button on your browser a few times. Did the items change place? Okay then you can play the game. Try to guess where your selected item will be the next time you hit Refresh. Keep track of how many times you are correct. It's harder than you think to predict where the items will move to.

()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()

But I digress way too much. Back to what Stephen talked about. He did say that Gingrich owes $800,000 for his website. What? Are you kidding me? I would have done it for a mere $100,000 and I would have given him way more Donate buttons. Stephen did sort of mention that the website is full on Donate buttons: Donate, Donate Today, Donate Now, Donate to support the campaign. (Oops, he forgot the plain old link at bottom of page that just says Donate. That's okay Stephen. Maybe it wasn't there earlier today.)

You know what, here's a free Donate button that Gingrich can use. That would help save money on his website cost. And if Gingrich had hired me to do his website, I would have done a much better job of getting good domain names and getting all the necessary domain names.





Stephen had a lot more stuff on the show about different guys with really interesting things to say. For example, Rick Perry said this on July 16, 2011:

"I'm getting more and more comfortable every day that this is what I've been called to do."

And on July 18, 2011, he had this to say:

"There's a lot of different ways to be called. My mother may call me for dinner."

(I hate to break it to Rick Perry, but hasn't Michele Bachmann already been "called" to run for POTUS?)

And Rush Limbaugh, the famous "Manatee of the Airwaves", had this to say recently: "Obama's out there pushing this August 2 deadline to get this thing done. That's because," (wait for it....) "Ramadan is August 1."

However, Representative Louie Gohmert (R - TX) had this to say on July 17, 2011:

"I can't help and be a little cynical here. Because we find out the president has a big birthday bash scheduled for August the 3rd, celebrities flying in from all over, and lo and behold, August 2nd is the deadline for getting something done so that they can have this massive maybe the biggest fundraising dinner in history for a birthday celebration."

Uh oh. Someone is a little bit peeved. Take a look at this Wikipedia page on Louie Gohmert and pay special attention to the part, right after his name, that says born August 18. Yep, someone is afraid his birthday won't get any attention. And is it my imagination or does that photo of Louie Gohmert look like he could be Stephen's identical twin brother?