Damn that Geneva Convention—US Supreme Court rules 5-3 against legality of military tribunals in prosecution of Guantanamo prisoners. Critics of President Bush’s policies on Gitmo have been outspoken in their praise for the decision.

That the Interns have lately taken to calling the staff restroom “little Gitmo” does not please me; as it happens, our janitorial service has recently abandoned its contract after one too many unpleasant messes (about which the less details the better). That this lapse in sanitary upkeep coincided—by chance, and through no intervention on my part—with Ronaldo getting locked in for several hours earlier this week, has inspired a degree of humanitarian outrage from the Interns that I have not seen since the local minimart stopped stocking Nutty Bars.

 

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They’re rocked out—Pacific Northwest rock trio Sleater-Kinney is breaking up after eleven years together. The official line is “indefinite hiatus”, which is, you have to admit, a very polite thing to say.

We here at The Times are big fans of the band—their brand of high-energy rock has always done well to inspire at least some movement in even the most slothlike of Interns—but eleven years is a big stretch. They’ve made some good albums, and they deserve to go out on their own terms.

Whereas, on the other hand, the Interns have made no albums and can only be taken out on leashes. Corin Tucker, how I envy thee.

 

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We’re Number…Out! Ghana beat US 2-1, ejecting US in the first round of the World Cup.

Today’s issue is brought to you by guest correspondent Alex “yes relation” Millard—and his fabulous octet choir. Alex is available for weddings, bar mitzvahs, “or whatever, if the money’s right.”

This may be our last World Cup update—or, as one of the Interns, Berklie, has been insisting I write, “Worldcupdate”—pending any new and truly interesting news beyond small differences between two integers, of course. Should a truck strike someone midgame, you might hear about it.

 

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Careful, new moons tonight—Pluto’s second and third moons have been named. Nix, goddess of night, and Hydra, a nine-headed snake beast—fitting for a ninth planet, or so the reasoning goes. One wonders if Hydra tucked one of his heads out of view every couple thousand years, the better to taunt Neptune…

Today’s issue is brought to you by what I can only hope will be a short-lived Intern sideproject: three of these over-privledged under-achievers have taken to wearing their hats backwards and writing, mostly, songs about properly cooking a turkey dinner. They’re calling themselves the Baste-y Boys.

That is a sentence I would never have expected to utter.

 

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Tenure, schmenure—Dan Rather will leave CBS News later this year. One imagines an uptick in playtime for a certain REM single over the next few months.

Mr. Rather, I’d trade you for any three Interns in a heartbeat.

 

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Ghana getcha—Ghana’s football team scores 2-0 World Cup victory over Czech Republic.

We’re not very sports-conscious here at The Aural Times. Now and then the Interns will strike up a game of hackysack or frisbee—which I wish they would do outside—but in general they specialize in, if any thing, a sort of competitive sloth. I have seen slouching matches that would make a strong man wince and rub his coccyx, and—oh, stop giggling, Gregor! It means tailbone! It’s a perfectly legitimate—

No, tail and bone aren’t funny either.

 

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Puppy love subverted—woman assaults breeder with dog corpse. Waving the puppy’s corpse out the sunroof of her car as she left seems mild, in that context.

We’ve got a strict no pets rule here at The Times—no dogs, no cats, no goldfish even. It is not a question of allergies—I simply cannot (a) trust the Interns to remember to feed/walk/clean them nor (b) afford the bulk kleenex orders needed to comfort the nincompoops when the inevitable happens.

 

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Three days late for the apocalypse—meteorite of suspected record size struck Norway early Friday morning. At press time, no clever jokes were available.

I have a note here from one of the Interns. Petunia, I think—looks like her idiosyncratic (read: childish, untrained) scrawl. It says, simply: “Norway. Built fjord tough.”

…

As I said early, at press time, no clever jokes were available.

 

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Not-so-straight still great—US Senate rejects gay marriage amendment. No word yet on followup legislation regarding the bi-curious.

Things are certainly gay around the office, today—gearing up for the weekend one and all, the Interns are, by my reckoning, more rambunctious and distracted than I think I have seen them all year. There is something about the Spring. There is, I reckon, something in the air. And while these rolicking idiot gods of youth culture I call my staff are not exactly what I would think of as marriage material, I admit that, on a personal level, it pleases me to know that any ill-considered matrimony that might occur to them is not utterly out of the question, regardless of gender.

 

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It’s a bad year to be in Jakarta—Mt. Merapi likely to erupt, just weeks after a nearby earthquake killed nearly 6,000 people.

It’s not exactly a good day for spelling and pronunciation in the office, at least for whichever lunatic Intern is responsible for the vocals on today’s song—if I didn’t know better, I’d guess he’s singing “Melapi”. Not that you can make out the words. Damned heavy metal. I’m going to have to put them back on barbershop duty if they keep this up.

 

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Dictionaries are for weenies—13-year-old New Jersey girl wins the National Spelling Bee. Young Miss Close left her Canadian opponent in second with a correct spelling of “ursprache”.

Here at the Times, we spell guitar “B R I A N M A Y”. Or we would, if I let the Interns do the copy-editing. However questionable their alphabesis may be, though, one cannot fault their fondness for the classic guitar harmonies of Queen—which is not to say that their nod (if you can call it that) to said group’s vocal harmonies should ever be spoken of again.

 

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Fiduciary bottle-smacking ahoy—ketchup fixture Heinz will reduce it’s workforce by 8% in what is being billed as a “growth plan” for the ailing company. Mustard spread over too much bread, as it were.

Personally, I’m a mayo man.

 

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