In the last couple of weeks, I can’t turn around without reading about how some prison guard scratched a cross in the dirt while John McCain was a P.O.W., and so that’s proof that he loves crosses and would be a great president. It’s a lovely story. When Sarah first read it, she said, “damn, that’s a good story.” Here’s the basic story, as told to NPR:

John McCain is more reluctant to talk about his own faith. And he has had rocky relations with religious conservatives. But McCain is a believer, and he has a powerful story about the time his own faith was tested — when he was being tortured as a prisoner of war.

One Christmas morning, he was allowed out of his cell for a few moments. As he stood alone in the prison courtyard, one of the Vietnamese guards — who had shown some small kindness to McCain in the past — walked up to him.

“Then with his sandal, the guard drew a cross in the dirt,” McCain said. “We stood wordlessly there for a minute or two, venerating the cross, until the guard rubbed it out and walked away. To me, that was faith: a faith that unites and never divides, a faith that bridges unbridgeable gaps in humanity. It is the faith that we are all equal and endowed by our creator with inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is the faith I would die to defend.”

Call me a cynic, but I immediately suspect any story that lovely. Because things like that don’t happen in real life. They happen in Vietnam movies. Why have I never heard this story before now? If a story that amazing ever happened to me, I would tell everyone I met. I’d tell strangers on the street about the incredible time I was a prisoner of war and a kindly prison guard scratched a cross in the dirt in front of me on Christmas morning. What I wouldn’t do is wait 40 years, and then say, “oh, shit, that reminds me …”

Well, according to the conspiracy theorists I choose to listen to, the story is, indeed, totally made up. First of all, the Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn told almost the same story about his time in a Soviet labor camp:

Leaving his shovel on the ground, he slowly walked to a crude bench and sat down. He knew that at any moment a guard would order him to stand up, and when he failed to respond, the guard would beat him to death, probably with his own shovel. He had seen it happen to other prisoners.

As he waited, head down, he felt a presence. Slowly he looked up and saw a skinny old prisoner squat down beside him. The man said nothing. Instead, he used a stick to trace in the dirt the sign of the Cross. The man then got back up and returned to his work.

As Solzhenitsyn stared at the Cross drawn in the dirt his entire perspective changed.

I know what you’re thinking … what the Hell does John McCain know about Alexander Solzhenitsyn? Apparently, enough to write an article in praise of him for the New York Sun:

He was a writer with unusual gifts, utterly devoted to his art, brilliant and exacting, producing work that would stun not just literary worlds but the entire Cold War political world, and he was resigned to being unread until “this secret authorship began to wear me down.”

The first time McCain is known to have told this story is in his 1999 autobiography, Faith of My Fathers. 30 years later, right before he ran for president, McCain suddenly remembered this powerful and life-changing event. An event that just happens to be exactly the same as a story told by his favorite writer. It reminds me of the time I found a golden ticket that invited me on a tour of the most marvelous chocolate factory …

(Thanks Daily Kos, Firedoglake, and Andrew Sullivan!)

I have lived with this secret for far too long, and I feel it is time to come clean. I am obsessed with this poster:

Now, I’m not obsessed with the movie Mamma Mia. That would just be weird. Nor am I obsessed with the actress in the poster, Amanda Seyfried. She played a dead chick on Veronica Mars and I always thought she looked like a creepy alien with fetal alcohol syndrome. But for some reason, I cannot stop thinking about this poster.

This poster is almost scientifically designed to appeal to men’s animal instincts. The hopeful look in her eyes. The ecstatic smile. The vulnerable pose. The watery background. The dress that looks like it’s just barely hanging on. This poster is aimed squarely at men whose only reason to ever go see this movie would be the hopes that there might be a scene of a vulnerable chick wearing a white wedding dress in a waterfall. If they were advertising to women, the poster would simply read “Abba musical” in gigantic block letters, and leave it at that.

They won’t fool me, though. There is no way the actual movie could ever live up to this image. I have no need to see the film Mamma Mia!, but if they ever make a movie called Mamma Mia!: The Poster — the Movie! I will be first in line.

I don’t know anything about sports. Josh told me he was shooting at the Arizona Cardinals training camp and I couldn’t understand why a baseball team would hold a training camp this late in the season. I think it’s because I didn’t grow up in a household where sports were followed, and all that information about who’s-on-what-team and how-each-team-is-doing gets chopped into pieces in my brain and tossed out my ears. I can watch the Super Bowl and have no idea two days later who won or who even played. I’m not proud of this; when I spent a few months as a traveling salesman back in the early days of New York, my inability to talk sports was the single most detrimental aspect of my sales pitch. But this is how it is, and at least I’ve learned to admit it upfront instead of trying to bluff my way through discussions in which I know nothing.

And that, my friends, is why I love the Olympics. Because no one knows anything about Olympic sports, yet in the space of a few weeks, we’re all transformed into experts. Every bit of information anyone knows about Olympic athletes is gleaned from exactly the same place: human interest profiles during the coverage. You’re not going to blow my mind with some insider knowledge about Michael Phelps, ’cause guess what? I saw the same damn segment! And in the case of the Olympics, you’re not considered more of a man if you can analyze strategy … no one is impressed by the guy who can tell you that Liukin’s best strategy here would be to go for the reverse triple flippity-flop instead of the back handspring twisteroo. Even the journalists who cover it have no idea what they’re talking about:

Liukin paced back and forth while Johnson, the final competitor, completed her performance, clapping as her teammate floated high in the air. In the end, it was Liukin who soared.

…

While other gymnasts tumble on the floor, their music little more than background noise, Liukin puts on a polished performance. Every wave of her arm and brush of her fingertips oozes emotion, making it easy to forget how tough those tricks in her program really are.

“Tricks”? The writer doesn’t even bother to find out what the names of the moves are. There’s no specialized lingo you have to know to describe an Olympic event. And no one cares! Because the Olympics has nothing to do with actual sports knowledge; it’s all about watching people flip around and hoping your country wins more medals than the Commies. And that’s the kind of athletics I can get into.

I also love this description:

She has one of the most difficult routines in the world, filled with intricate moves that are linked together to make them even harder. But her grace and style make it look easy. When she pirouettes on the high bar, turning her body all the way around not once, not twice but three times, she looks just like a jewelry box ballerina.

This is the journalistic equivalent of writing about a basketball game and saying — “Kobe Bryant is renowned for his skill and agility at getting the ball in the net. He runs so well and fast, and then he leaps over some guys and puts the ball right into the net, where it belongs. His graceful flipping and jumping is truly a sight to behold. He looks just like a big, tough butterfly.”

First, there came the promise of perpetual motion. About 2 years ago, this company called Steorn took out a giant ad in The Economist saying they’d developed a machine that generated more energy than it took to run, thereby providing a solution to all of our energy needs. They said they were going to have some scientists look at the technology they developed, and then they were going to have a demonstration to prove to the world that their technology worked. There appeared to be a lot of money behind the company and it seemed like the founder of the company actually believed his claims, even though perpetual motion is, according to all we know about physics, impossible.

Well, they held the demonstration, it was a miserable failure, and we haven’t heard a lot from them since. (Although I just went to their website, and it appears they’re still insistent that they have the solution.) At any rate, it seems like if you’ve got a machine that creates more energy than it needs, you wouldn’t have to spend 2 years trying to get it verified … it would just work.

I followed the news and was pretty excited about the possibility that maybe, just maybe, there are things going on in the universe that we don’t fully understand. I don’t know why the thought that there’s some mystery left in the universe makes me happy, but every time, I’m waiting patiently with my fingers crossed. And every time, it seems like these claims turn out to be hoaxes or mistakes or something that is considerably less thrilling than what I would like it to be.

Recently, we’ve had the guy with the alien footage … a guy shot a video of an alien that he was going to show to the world, and for whatever reason, he decided not to show it. There was the Montauk Monster, which apparently, really was viral marketing (damn you Gawker!) We’ve got dozens of reports of UFOs in Stephenville, Texas, which, although they haven’t really been explained, still have not led to the alien/human cocktail party I’ve been awaiting.

And now Bigfoot. Three guys in California claim to have the body of a sasquatch that they’re going to unveil to the public in, I’m sure, some overly convoluted way that will be retracted at the last minute.

I’m not asking for much here, people. Just give me something that doesn’t fit neatly into our rational worldview. Bigfoot, Nessie, aliens, mothman, anything. There has got to be something weird out there just waiting to be discovered, right?

I had to go away for a little while, goblins. I don’t want to get into the details, but let’s just say I was disappeared. I have returned now, and I will be back shortly with more of my trademark outraged posts about political situations of which I have only a vague understanding.

Also, if you’re in LA, don’t forget to mark your calender for my gig on August 23rd at the Pig N’ Whistle. 9:30 PM sharp.

Videogum linked to this video of Weird Al Yankovic’s first television appearance. Weird Al ruled my musical universe in fifth grade. In 1986, there were two types of fifth grade boys: the ones who were into Weird Al, and the ones who were into Iron Maiden. I was one of the Weird Al kids. The kids like me went on to listen to what was then called college rock, followed by alternative, followed by whatever the kids are calling it nowadays. The Iron Maiden kids went on to listen to Iron Maiden.

As Videogum points out, Weird Al wouldn’t look out of place hanging out in a hipster club in Williamsburg. God bless him. You gotta admire anyone who puts this much energy into his performance.

And also: what is that dope sound box his boy is playing? Where do I get me one of those?

Sarah and I are trying to get to Turkey at the end of September. Anyone have any advice on how to find cheap overseas airline tickets?

As reported below, an AP story came out today alleging that Bruce Ivins, the supposed mastermind behind the 2001 anthrax letters, has been obsessed with the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority since college. I’m not sure what form his obsession took … did he keep trying to pledge in spite of decades of rejection? But my friend Kelly was KKG in college and I can assure you that if you’re going to be obsessed with a sorority, that’s the one to pick.

In the original report, one of the major clues leading the FBI to Ivins was that the letters were mailed near the Princeton Kappa Kappa Gamma chapter. So the theory is that on the day the anthrax letters were mailed, Ivins drove down to Princeton (a 2 1/2 hour drive) and chucked the letters in a mailbox on his way to the KKG house to loiter around and creep out some coeds. If you’re going to terrorize people around the country with biochemical weapons, you might as well stop and check out the new pledges while you’re at it.

But wait! There’s been a breaking update! From the AP’s newly revised scoop:

The mailbox just off the campus of Princeton University where the letters were mailed sits about 100 yards away from where the college’s Kappa Kappa Gamma chapter stores its rush materials, initiation robes and other property. Sorority members do not live there, and the Kappa chapter at Princeton does not provide a house for the women.

So … there weren’t even any women at this house? Man, Ivins must have been pissed. He was like, “I can’t wait to mail these anthrax letters and check out some Kappa tail!” and then when he showed up he was all, “Goddammit! Where are all the chicks? Well, at least I got my anthrax errand out of the way.” Either that or … shudder … he wasn’t into the girls, he was into the robes. Now that’s a pervert.

So lately people are all, “what’s up with anthrax?” I know there’s an awful lot to muddle through in these new anthrax findings, and I assume the first place you check for clarification is my site. When you want someone to muddle through complex stories for you, get the facts all wrong, and report back with a paranoid, lefty-slanted version of the truth, there is only one place to turn: jeffreydinsmore.com.

The basics are that this scientist, Dr. Bruce Ivins, committed suicide last week. Or say they say. After he killed himself, it came out that he was the primary suspect in the anthrax attacks that killed 5 people in 2001. Why was he the primary suspect? Because:

• He worked with anthrax at Fort Detrick, the US Government’s biological weapons research facility.
• He was known to have cleaned up anthrax that had spilled in the office.
• He killed himself.

And that’s about the extent of the actual evidence we’ve seen so far.

The next big piece of anti-Ivins news that you may have heard about is that his therapist (Jean Carol Duley) had a restraining order against him, because she believed him to be a “homicidal sociopath.” The restraining order was filed 5 days before he killed himself. You can read it on the Smoking Gun. According to reports, Duley claims to have received harassing phone calls from Ivins which prompted the restraining order.

A few things here: Jean Duley is the only one so far who has come forward with the belief that Ivins was a homicidal sociopath — a pretty enormous accusation to make against someone. Bruce Ivins worked at Ft. Detrick for 36 years. Does it take 36 years for our government to recognize that they have a homicidal maniac working in their bioweapons research department? And when it’s finally caught, is it plausible that it would be caught by … not a government psychiatrist, but a social worker who, as of July, 2007, was still finishing her degree?

In addition, Jean Duley is not necessarily the type of upstanding citizen whose words the media should reprint as gospel sans background check. (Note: the information about Jean Duley primarily comes from this article by Glenn Greenwald and this article by Larisa Alexandrovna.) She is currently on probation after a December 2007 DUI. She had another DUI in 2006 and yet another charge of reckless driving that same year. Granted, being an alcoholic and a bad driver is not proof that one is a bad social worker, but if Ms. Duley is being quoted as an expert on Ivins’s psychological profile, I would think her psychological profile should probably be given equal merit.

The other major weirdness in the case has to do with the initial 2001 attempts to tie the anthrax mailings to Iraq. If you’ll remember, the anthrax-laced letters were mailed with notes that read things like “Allah is great. You die now.” and “Death to America. Death to Israel.” Clearly, the work of Muslim terrorists, or so everyone assumed at the time. In the initial furor over where the letters were coming from, ABC News reported that they had learned from “four well placed and separate sources” that the anthrax was determined to contain a chemical known as bentonite, which was only produced in one country — Iraq. Bentonite, ABC News claimed, was a “trademark of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s biological weapons program.”

That’s not the weird part. The weird part is that the tests finding traces of this Iraqi chemical in the anthrax were done at Fort Detrick.

So, to simplify: It is now suspected that the anthrax letters originated from Fort Detrick. In 2001, ABC News reported that, according to their sources, Fort Detrick determined that the anthrax came from Iraq. Ergo, the person (or people) who were responsible for the anthrax attacks were the same people who tried to pin it on Iraq.

There are two options here. #1, the obvious: Dr. Bruce Ivins was an evil genius who really, really wanted us to go to war with Iraq. He stole some anthrax from work, sent it out to a weirdly diverse group of people with letters making it seem like it came from Muslim terrorists, then contacted three fellow scientists to tell them an Iraqi-made chemical was found in the anthrax and somehow got them all to share this information with ABC News. 7 years later, he made harassing phone calls to the brilliant-yet-chronically drunk social worker who discovered that he had spent his entire life hiding his secret homicidal urges from his wife, his family, his friends, his coworkers, and his employer, the US Army. The social worker filed a restraining order against him, and 5 days later, he killed himself.

or

#2 - we are no closer to knowing the truth about this matter today than we were 7 years ago.

Bizarre Update: Apparently, Ivins was not just a homicidal maniac. He was also obsessed with sorority chicks:

WASHINGTON (AP) — The top suspect in the 2001 anthrax attacks was obsessed with a sorority that sat less than 100 yards away from a New Jersey mailbox where the toxin-laced letters were sent, authorities said Monday.

Multiple U.S. officials told The Associated Press that former Army scientist Bruce Ivins was long obsessed with the sorority Kappa Kappa Gamma, going back as far as his own college days at the University of Cincinnati.

The officials all spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case publicly.

The bizarre link to the sorority may indirectly explain one of the biggest mysteries in the case: why the anthrax was mailed from Princeton, N.J., 195 miles from the Army biological weapons lab the anthrax is believed to have been smuggled out of.

But of course! Obviously, the reason why the anthrax letters were mailed from a mailbox in Princeton, NJ, was because a bioweapons specialist at Fort Detrick stuck them in a mailbox after driving 195 miles to hang out in front of a sorority! It all makes sense now! What more can we learn from this incisive report?

Katherine Breckinridge Graham, a Kappa alumna who serves as an adviser to the sorority’s Princeton chapter, said Monday she was interviewed by FBI agents “over the last couple of years” about the case. She said she could not provide any details about the interview because she signed an FBI nondisclosure form.

However, Graham said there was nothing to indicate that any of the sorority members had anything to do with Ivins.

“Nothing odd went on,” said Graham, an attorney.

“Nothing odd went on?!?” Didn’t we just hear from “multiple U.S. officials” that this guy was obsessed with sorority girls? So … what form did this obsession take, exactly? It must have been pretty weird if it’s called right out in the headline as an “obsession”.

Local police in both Princeton Borough and Princeton Township said Ivins’ name did not turn up on any incident reports or restraining orders.

O … kay. No incident reports? Not even a little, itty-bitty, “there’s some creepy guy hanging out in front of the house mailing letters?” I get it … it was a fun obsession! The kind that isn’t noticeable by anyone!

One more:

Kappa Kappa Gamma also has chapters at nearby colleges in Maryland, Pennsylvania and Washington. One official said investigators were working off the theory that Ivins chose to mail the letters from the Princeton chapter to confuse investigators if he ever were to emerge as a suspect in the case.

This is by far my favorite part of the article. At this point in the story, even though we haven’t seen a shred of proof, we’ve accepted the thesis that Ivins was obsessed with Kappa Kappa Gamma. Because what’s more fun than an anthrax-wielding pervert? The intrepid reporters recognize, though, that there’s one lingering question on everyone’s mind. Why would he mail his anthrax from so far away? Obviously, he had to mail his anthrax from a Kappa Kappa Gamma house, because that was his obsession, (just like, if I were to ever stick biochemicals in the mail, I’d definitely do it from the In and Out Burger), but aren’t there any KKG chapter closer to Fort Detrick?

Yes, the AP tells us, there certainly are. But Ivins was smart, see? He drove all the way to Princeton to confuse investigators. Because he knew someday they’d find out about his secret Kappa Kappa Gamma obsession and try to put two and two together, but would most likely give up when they found out the letters were mailed from Princeton, thinking, “well, he’s obsessed with this sorority, and the letters were mailed in front of this sorority, but it just doesn’t make sense that he would drive 195 miles to do so when he could have just gone to the Kappa Kappa Gamma down the street. You’re off the hook, Ivins!” Obviously.

Morgan Freeman flipped his car last night and is currently in serious condition. This is where urban legends are born. Who’s next? I finally saw The Dark Knight on Sunday (loved it) and clearly Maggie Gyllenhall is battling some kind of face-eating jowl disease. Although my prediction: Gary Oldman will be the next person to suffer from the curse, in the kitchen, with the candlestick. Mark it!