New Rule: The problem with this picture of Vanessa Hudgins isn't that she's a bad role model. The problem with it is that there's no room for it on the flag. If you ask the Marines in Fallujah what they're fighting for, this would probably come up slightly more often than the name Nouri al-Maliki. The only thing wrong with this is that in eight years, it's going to turn into this.
New Rule: Technology businesses must cut the baby talk. It's 2007. You're a rapacious, multi-billion-dollar corporation, not a stuffed animal. This week, Yahoo! announced a deal with Bebo, which will help it compete with Google. I had to Wiki Bebo to find out it's kind of like Friendster and Woofy. Gosh, I hope they can all band together and save Fuzzleton Village from the evil Snorgs! Grow up! If I want to see uncaring money-making machines with cutesy names, I'd go to a strip club.
New Rule: We may never know what the World Trade Center meant to our enemies, but our inability to build anything on the site in six years symbolizes our national head-up-the-ass. You know, it took two years to build the Eiffel Tower. In the 1880s. By hand. By French guys, while screwing their mistresses. Of course we can't rebuild Iraq. We can't get shit done in Soho!
And while we're on the subject, New Rule: Crazy people who still think the government brought down the Twin Towers in a controlled explosion have to stop pretending that I'm the one who's being naïve. How big a lunatic do you have to be to watch two giant airliners packed with jet fuel slam into buildings on live TV, igniting a massive inferno that burned for two hours, and then think, well, if you believe that was the cause… Stop asking me to raise this ridiculous topic on the show and start asking your doctor if Paxil is right for you.
New Rule: Stop b*tching that Apple cut the price of the iPhone. Early adopters always pay a premium. "Early adopters" being a business term meaning "dipshits who stand in line for six hours... for a freaking phone. It's not a price cut. It's a repeal on the "Nerd Tax." If you didn't have to be the first on your block to have the latest gizmo, you'd now have an extra $200 to spend on your imaginary girlfriend.
And finally, New Rule - and I never thought I'd be the one to say this, but: Don't show me your tits. Last week, the world's first "Nurse In" was held to protest the case of a woman who was breast-feeding in public, and asked by an Appleby's manager not to leave, but just to cover up a little bit. Because the wait staff got tired of hearing, "I'll have what that kid's having."
Look, I'm not trying to be insensitive here. I know your baby needs to eat, but so do I, and this is Appleby's, so I'm already nauseous.
Breast-feeding a baby is an intimate act, and I don't want to watch strangers performing intimate acts. At least not for free. It cheapens it. But breast-feeding activists - yes, breast-feeding activists, called "lactivists" - say this is a human right and appropriate everywhere, because it's natural. Well, so is masturbating, but I generally don't do that at Appleby's. Not in the main dining area, anyway.
I mean, next thing, women will be wanting to give birth in the waterfall at the mall! Look, there's no principle at work here other than being too lazy to either plan ahead or cover up. It's not fighting for a right. It's fighting for the spotlight you surely will get when you go all "Janet Jackson" on everyone. And get to drink in the "oohs" and "aahs" from the other customers because "You made a baby!" Something a dog can do.
Only in America do women think they deserve a medal for having a kid. In China, women give birth on their lunch hour, and by the afternoon, they're back on line, painting lead onto Barbie dolls.
But this isn't really about women taking their breasts out in public, as much as I'd like it to be. It's about how petty and parochial our causes have become, how activism has become narcissism. It's why Al Gore can't get people to focus on global warming unless there's a rock concert. "Melting icebergs, brought to you by Smashing Pumpkins."
It's why there'll be no end to this dumb war until there is a draft. Because, at the end of the day, Iraq is somebody else's problem.
And, by the way, there is a place where breasts and food do go together. It's called "Hooters."
