N.E.W.S. of the day…with smartassery.

Bobby Jindal: i can haz gravitaz?

For those who were worried that the loss of George W. Bush would be a terrible blow to comedians across the land, rest assured that the Republican Party is just as dedicated to providing buffoons for us to laugh at as it is to promoting tax cuts for the idle rich as the only solution for everything from genital warts to possible catastrophic asteroid collision.

Sarah Palin and Joe the Unlicensed Plumber Not Named Joe were great buffoons, and Rush Limbaugh has really been pulling his weight lately, but ladies and gents, we have a new champeen: Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana.

Knowing they couldn’t beat President Obama on charm or substance, the GOP wisely chose to beat him on laughs, and pulled the goofiest Joker from their misbegotten deck to provide the official Republican response to Obama’s big speech before Congress.

Jindal is another entry in the new Minstrel Show the Republicans are putting on to show that they have colored folks too, and are, in the words of RNC Chairman Michael Steele, “off the hook.” (And Steele himself is quite the Negro, apparently, since Minnesota Congresswoman Michelle Bachman told him “Michael Steele! You be da man! You be da man!”) (And Bachman herself recently bemoaned the tragic circumstance that “we’re running out of rich people in this country…” and I could just keep digressing and digressing at the idiocy this party has to offer, but I am supposed to be talking about Jindal right now…)

Jindal came bobbing onto screen and started talking in a Gomer-Pyle-with-a-head-wound way that seemed to uncannily channel Kenneth the Page on 30 Rock (this observation is in no way original to me, it’s all over the net, and Jack McBrayer even went on The Late Show in character to comment on it). Not only did he come across as an idiot, he told a dramatic story about how he courageously stood up to government bureaucracy during rescue operations during Hurricane Katrina which his office has now been forced to acknowledge was a lie.

But Jindal’s creds as a lackwit go far deeper than his performance after Obama’s speech. Much like Sarah Palin, Bobby has been involved in spiritual warfare against the forces of darkness, and while Sarah was only blessed by a minister who has driven witches out of their homes in Africa, the Bobster himself took part in exorcising a demon out of his best friend Susan:

Whenever I concentrated long enough to begin prayer, I felt some type of physical force distracting me. It was as if something was pushing down on my chest, making it very hard for me to breathe. . . Though I could find no cause for my chest pains, I was very scared of what was happening to me and Susan. I began to think that the demon would only attack me if I tried to pray or fight back; thus, I resigned myself to leaving it alone in an attempt to find peace for myself.

It appeared as if we were observing a tremendous battle between the Susan we knew and loved and some strange evil force. But the momentum had shifted and we now sensed that victory was at hand.While Alice and Louise held Susan, her sister continued holding the Bible to her face. Almost taunting the evil spirit that had almost beaten us minutes before, the students dared Susan to read biblical passages. She choked on certain passages and could not finish the sentence “Jesus is Lord.” Over and over, she repeated “Jesus is L..L..LL,” often ending in profanities. In between her futile attempts, Susan pleaded with us to continue trying and often smiled between the grimaces that accompanied her readings of Scripture. Just as suddenly as she went into the trance, Susan suddenly reappeared and claimed “Jesus is Lord.”

Palin/Jindal 2012? There’s something worth praying for.

Mermaid Dreams

When she was a little girl, Nadya Vessey lost both her legs below the knee. As an adult, she wrote to New Zealand special effects powerhouse Weta Workshop (the guys who made the Lord of the Rings movies so freaking amazing) and asked if they’d create a prosthetic for her that would make her into a mermaid. They did.

I don’t have much to say about this, really, only that it’s just cool as hell that they did this for her. Both onscreen and offscreen, Weta apparently sees their mission as bringing magic into the world.