Dave Barry Used To Make Me Laugh

til I cried. This time, not so much. I guess 2009 was worse than even he could imagine.
Good tidbit:

To replace Souter, President Obama nominates Sonia Sotomayor, setting off the traditional Washington performance of Konfirmation Kabuki, in which the Democrats portray the nominee as basically a cross between Abraham Lincoln and the Virgin Mary, and the Republicans portray her more as Ursula the Sea Witch with a law degree. Sotomayor will eventually be confirmed, but only after undergoing the traditional Senate Judiciary Committee hazing ritual, during which she must talk for four straight days without expressing an opinion.

UPDATE: Okay, it grew on me, although I think that leaking from my right eye is an impacted tear duct. The left one, I'm not sure.

In a troubling economic development, the U.S. dollar, for the first time in history, falls below the lentil.

Corrections And Other Fact-Based Journalism

It's Regret the Error's annual round-up, with this year's "correction of the year" award going to Dave Barry for this explanation:

In yesterday’s column about badminton, I misspelled the name of Guatemalan player Kevin Cordon. I apologize. In my defense, I want to note that in the same column I correctly spelled Prapawadee Jaroenrattanatarak, Poompat Sapkulchananart and Porntip Buranapraseatsuk. So by the time I got to Kevin Cordon, my fingers were exhausted.

The operator of this site also has named an annual prize after the long-time author of the British The Guardian's corrections, since he sets the standard:

Deep depression: Our economics editor has officially gone from recession to depression. By mangling the names of two of history’s most highly decorated economists, John Maynard Keynes and Milton Friedman, we not only created an economy of truth but blamed poor Milton Keynes for having “crazy” ideas (We can all learn from Depression, Opinion, page 21, September 29). Milton Keynes is an English town famous not only for its grid system of roads and its herd of concrete cows but because in 1998 it was deemed so boring that even chartered accountants refused to move there. The “crazy” ideas comment was intended for John Maynard Keynes, who was voted one of Time Magazine’s most important people of the 20th century - and who was not boring.

Altogether, the entire piece qualifies as the best read I've had in a long time.

It Feels So Good To Laugh Until You Cry

and Dave Barry is the only writer who has ever made me do that. I think I stopped reading him when I decided I didn't have time to be happily entertained and filled with mirth, life was too serious. Then, when I realized I still needed him, he went on sabattical or something.
But he's back, and in China. Ahh, much better now.

...Now you are in Beijing traffic, which is like an exciting video game with the bonus element of potential death. You have fast-moving cars, trucks and buses; you have a wide variety of mutant two-and-three-wheeled motorbike-contraptions putting along at minus two miles per hour; you have many bicycles, sometimes with an entire family on the one bicycle, dad pedaling, mom balanced behind him, holding a baby; and you have the occasional pushcart, stacked high with what appears to be trash. All of these vehicles are competing for the same packed road space, and nobody ever yields to anybody. Left turns routinely produce dramatic oncoming-bus moments that cause you to very nearly void your clueless western bladder.
Sometimes your driver will gesture at another vehicle, then turn to you and say something in Chinese, which you interpret to mean, ''Can you BELIEVE these morons?'' You answer ''Ha ha!,'' meaning it in the sense of ``Please resume watching the road.''

NOTE TO SELF: Bookmark Dave Barry blog. Read daily.