December 11, 2006

The Boston Herald reports: Feds bust truck trainee who balks at back up

A truck-driving student is in custody in Boston after raising suspicions when he wasn?t interested in learning how to back up his rig.
WLVI-TV (Ch. 56) reported last night that the would-be trucker is a 28-year-old Muslim from India and had overstayed his visa. An investigation is under way to see whether there is any connection between his unusual behavior and a terrorism plot. Federal authorities were alerted by instructors at the Nationwide Tractor Trailer Driving School in Smithfield, R.I., WLVI reported.
The student was described as a resident of New York, with driver?s licenses from New York, New Jersey and Rhode Island.
?Every indicator was there,? R.I. State Police Major Steve O?Donnell told WLVI. ?Any one of these things alone is fine, but four or five together . . . ?

Why is it that anytime there’s news of a “potential terrorist plot foiled”, it quickly devolves into the preemptive arrest of one or more incompetent terrorist wannabes?

I’m certainly relieved this individual is not going to be hitting the road. Because it’s obvious that he would have been a much greater risk to public safety trying to be a truck driver than trying to be a terrorist.

Also in Jollye Olde Englande, a headline that makes clear the fork between British English and American English: HALF ASBOS ARE BROKEN BY YOBS.

But then again, it is the NewsCorp-owned Sun, so maybe communication was not really what it was going after.

Still, getting your half-asbo broken sounds painful, so I’d stay away from yobs.

And I’ll bet that 90% of those asbos are not under warranty.

Wikipedia to the rescue: ASBO is a Brit acronym for Anti-Social Behavior Order, which doesn’t make sense either. Who would order people to do anti-social behavior and why?

And YOB is a Brit slang term for an “uncouth blue-collar individual”. Because we don’t have nearly enough terms for them: punk, thug, goon, gangster (or gangsta for the ‘r’ afflicted), mug, hood and my personal favorite: brigand.

The Etymology of Yob: “Backward spelling for boy.” So, is dyslexia assumed for the person labeled thusly, or just the person doing the labeling?

Then there is “Yobbo”, which is I guess the more proper form of Yob, and probably should apply to an “uncouth white-color individual”. Which is easier to say than “Member of Rupert Murdoch’s family”.

As a rule, I shake my head in distress everytime I read about a popular survey of sexy celebrities”, male or female. As for my personal taste, well, I was saddened to hear that Roma “Angel” Downey had chosen Mark “Survivor” Burnett over me. I’m sorry, Pam, Britney, Anna Nicole, but to you all I say “Yuck!” And the choices women have of sexy men disturbs me at times. I have to say that Daniel Craig, the new James Bond, certainly has the moist sex appeal of any actor filling that tuxedo since the very young Sean Connery (and I hope he ages much more gracefully). And I was fairly happy that a recent British survey rated him “most likely fantasized about while making love to their (real) partners”. But the Number Two in that survey is… SIMON COWELL?!?!?!?
This may be the one of the greatest affronts to common sense perpetrated this year (and it’s been a bad year for common sense). The FARK headline summed it up: “Suggested line for spicing up the bedroom: ‘No, no, no — you’re doing it all wrong; that was awful’”

I recently used a variation of the title “No Sex Please, We’re British”, but if anything supports the Anglophobic stereotype of a nation that dislikes sex, making Simon Cowell a sex symbol is IT.

But again, for aspiring comedy writers, this is pure platinum:

If Simon’s the standard, why didn’t they rate Dick Cheney highly?

Extra disturbing is the suggestion that British women apparently envy Paula Abdul.While American women like a cute ass, British women apparently prefer a smart one.

Maybe they expect sex with Simon to be like an Idol audition, good or bad, it’ll be over in 3 minutes.

Proving that when it comes to sex, it’s American Idol but British Idle. (with apologies to Eric Idle)