But Iran Doesn't Like Us

Remember the three American "hikers" that had inadvertently hiked into Iran whilst they were attempting to hike along the Iran-Iraq border? And remember how they were taken into custody by the Iranians? And remember Iran released the girl but the other two have been in custody ever since because Iran says that they were spies? Well, if you didn't remember, consider yourself caught up.

Before I continue, I just need to say a few things about the situation that put those three folks in the position that they are/were in. First of all, if you're in the Middle East and you want to go "hiking", I cannot for the life of me figure out why you wouldn't be either more cognizant of where the borders were or wouldn't just hike really far away from the borders to begin with. Hiking so close to Iran's borders seems to be just asking for trouble if you're asking me.

Second, I find myself conflicted as to how Iran is dealing with this situation. On the one hand, I am fairly certain that these folks were not and are not spies. On that same hand, I really have absolutely nothing to base that on other than the fact that they don't seem like they would be spies. This ideology is based loosely on watching the Pink Panther when I was a child. Oh, and Scooby Doo. Thus, if I am Iran, what do I do? I have to say that I will lend a certain degree of respect to a country that protects its borders. I'm not even so sure that I'm concerned with how a country protects its borders, as long as it does so.

Those perspectives that I have are the reasons why I'm not overly sympathetic to the hikers. Sure, people make mistakes. But, come on! How delusional are you if you think you'll be just fine if you accidentally hike into Iran? You should be wearing a helmet at all times if that's how your mind works. And then I read an opinion piece by Sarah Shourd, the freed female American hiker, over there at CNN. And her logic in the piece is a bit surprising. It's as if she has no clue as to the history between the United States and Iran. Then again, this is the same person who was doing all of the border hiking, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

Sarah states in her piece that "At a very personal level, I never would have been kept in jail for 14 months if Iran and the United States had a better relationship." I'm not so sure that I believe that to be accurate. It sounds nice, but I doubt it. The United States has pretty good relationships with other countries whose citizens have been caught spying. We don't just let them go. Again, you have to go on the basis that Iran is using, that being that they were spies or doing something that would harm Iran, in order to justify them keeping them in custody. Then again, they were not in the country lawfully, so I guess you don't even really need to justify it with anything other than that.

She goes on to say that "How different our situation would have been if the United States had an embassy in Iran when Shane, Josh and I were arrested on the border with Kurdistan, where we had gone hiking." Um, is she kidding me?! The United States did have an embassy in Iran. Perhaps she is unaware of the little disturbance that took place in that embassy in 1979 when Sixty-six Americans were taken captive when Iranian militants seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. Perhaps she is also unaware that 52 of those hostages were held for a total of 444 days. And if that's the case, I guess she also didn't hear about the eight American servicemen who lost their lives during a rescue mission. And she thinks that we need an embassy in Iran? Are you dry shaving me?

Allow me to show you a picture of what the former US embassy in Iran looked like after the hostages were taken. Picture is courtesy of Wikipedia.

Oh, sure. They just loooooove us. She also has the nerve to say "I hope our leaders find the courage to begin to break from our nations' hostile past..." Do you now? Our leaders? Plural? Explain to me what the United States is supposed to be doing when I'm A Dinner Jacket (Ahmadinejad) continues with his nuclear program against everyone's wishes? Explain to me what we're supposed to do with a guy, who wants to blow Israel off of the map, who is intent on making his country a nuclear power? It's not a hostile past that is all of the problem. It's the hostile present, cupcake. I should also note that there are some former hostages who believe that Ahmadinejad was actually one of their captors and have identified him as such. If that's the case and he's now the President of Iran, I'm not so sure that the "courage" is going to be "found" by him to "break from our nations' hostile past".

Look, I totally understand that her two friends are still being imprisoned over there in Iran and she wants to have them freed. Therefore, I can understand why she wouldn't write anything that would be overly critical or take a harsh tone with the Iranian government. But I can't understand why she would write anything like what she did in the first place. Does she really think that it's going to matter what she says? I don't think that it is. Then again, this woman does seems to have a fairly delusional way of thinking when it comes to international relations, so I guess it's to be expected.

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Slow News Day In Iran

There are plenty of slow news days in the US, especially during the summer. That's when we tend to hear more about things like Lindsay Lohan's nether regions than we do during other times of the year, simply because there isn't a lot going on. (Fortunately, we're spared from that this time around, as Lindsay is still holed up in the Lynwood pokey and should be for a few more days now.) But it must be a really slow news day in Iran. How else would you explain their wacky leader, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (pronounced "I'm a dinner jacket") speaking out about Paul the Octopus. Wait. The what now?

Paul. The Octopus. That is correct. If you're unfamiliar with Paul, allow me to familiarize you. Paul is an octopus. It's right there in his name. According to the folks across the pond at The Telegraph Paul "...became an international star after predicting the outcome of all seven German World Cup matches accurately." The way I understand how that worked was someone would put a little octopus treat into two different containers, each one labeled with the flag of the country that was playing in the match. Whichever treat Paul selected was assumed to be his pick for the winner of the match. Paul not only selected the winner once, he selected the winner seven times. (Granted, I don't think that Paul knew what in the world he was doing other than getting himself a little snack, but that's what happened.)

I'm a Dinner Jacket felt the need to mention Paul on more than one occasion when he gave a speech this past weekend in Tehran. Some of his anti-Paul points were:

He "...accused the octopus of spreading "western propaganda and superstition." It is unclear how an octopus does that. I am also unfamiliar with any sort of western propaganda involving octopuses. Octopi? Octopussies? You know what I mean.

He "...claims that the octopus is a symbol of decadence and decay among "his enemies". If "his enemies" include the German soccer team, then he may have a point. Granted, there is no evidence indicating that this is what the deal is. I get that. You get that. Dinner jacket does not get that.

He says that Paul "...is a symbol of all that is wrong with the western world." I don't know if it's a symbol of all that's wrong. Have you paid attention to the western world lately? There's an awful lot of things that are wrong. I highly doubt that they can all be symbolized by one octopus. Please. Even symbols have limits.

And finally, this nutjob said, "Those who believe in this type of thing cannot be the leaders of the global nations that aspire, like Iran, to human perfection, basing themselves in the love of all sacred values." Hey, valuing an octopus that can predict the outcome of sports events where betting and subsequent winning can be involved sounds just like the sort of thing that I'd like to base myself in. Who said that just because we like a tricky octopus that we aspire to lead a nation? Why can't we just want to watch some soccer and eat some hot wings? OK, fine. I don't really want to watch soccer, but I do enjoy the hot wings. Can't we just do that? And have the octopus get his treat? Seems reasonable to me. Then again, I'm not some crazy dictator of one of the sand lands, so what do I know? Probably not much, but I'd like to think that I'd be able to talk about something other than the alleged evils of an octopus which may or may not be able to predict the outcome of soccer matches.

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It's Not Change If It's The Same

Continued unrest going on over yonder in the sand country of Iran after the incumbent "President" Mahmoud I'm A Dinner Jacket likely had a hand in or some sort of knowledge of the election being rigged to end up in his favor by "defeating" the opponent, a one Mir-Hossein Mousavi. Thousands of folks are protesting in the streets. Iranian government is freaking out and doing absurd things like shutting off access to Facebook and Twitter. (Oh, no! They won't be able to update their status! How FB rude!) Journalists are confined to their hotel rooms. It's not good. But the more I heard about how their whole system works over there, I became rather confused as to why what is going on is actually going on.

OK, so the throngs of people protesting in the sand are upset because they believe that their candidate, ol' Mousavi, was robbed! They're acting as if he was going to be the President Barry of Tehran. Um, not quite. See, this will come as a HUGE shock to you, but they don't do things in Iran the same way that they are done in the United States. The US has processes of electing a leader that are actually like electing a leader. Anyone who meets the requirements can run and can theoretically be elected. And the requirements are pretty basic. You just have to be a certain age and have been born in this country. (And by the way, for the very reason that someone who has been born in a foreign land cannot be President is the exact same reason why it is going to mean eventual disaster by the US continuing to ignore the illegal immigration problem and allowing folks to not only live in this country illegally but to provide them with services as well! But no one is screaming that it's "anti-immigrant" to not let an immigrant become President. Hmmm.) Not so in Iran.

In Iran, they have what they call the Council of Guardians which consists of 12 clerics who sort of vet the folks who apply to be a candidate. Usually hundreds of people apply, none of which are women because of course, they're forbidden in Iran from running for President. God, could you imagine how great that would be if they were allowed to run and one of 'em won? It'll never happen, but I do think it has pretty good Hollywood crappy comedy movie potential. So the guys who are running for President have been approved of by this Council of Guardians who seem to be kind of like the Paula, Randy and Simon of the Middle East, only there's twelve of them.

And the position of President of Iran is not as it is in the United States. It's not even how it "used to be" in the United States (because now the President of the United States is some sort of travelling rock star who wows us with his ability to swat flies and eat burgers all at the same time as he saves the world from utter destruction.). Iran also has something called the Supreme Leader. NOT Diana Ross. The Supreme Leader is a one Ayatollah Khamenei. I don't think he's the same Ayatollah Khomeni from a few years back, so I can just assume that they recycle the names of their leaders in the same way that they're all named Mohammed. But his title is just as it sounds: Completely made up and the supreme leader of the country.

The President of Iran has very little power that he himself can assert. You wouldn't know it the way ol' Ferret Face is always shooting off his mouth, would you? The Supreme Leader is the one calling the shots. The President of Iran can appoint people to his cabinet, but regardless as to what they do or they decide, the Supreme Leader can reject anything he wants to. He also the commander-in-chief of the armed and police forces; the head the state ministry in control of television and radio; and he's in charge of the country's judiciary. Oh, yeah. And he gets to be Supreme Leader for the rest of his life. It's like a tenured dictator. Nice.

So the guy will have not a lot of ability or influence for change unless that sort of change is OK with the Supreme Leader. Seems strange that people are as gung-ho as they are for what would appear to be the status quo. But what kind of a guy is Mousavi? According to a one Robert Baer over yonder there at TIME Magazine, Mousavi, who was the "Prime Minister from 1981 to 1989, almost certainly had a hand in the planning of the Iranian-backed truck-bombing attacks on the U.S. embassy in April 1983 and the Marine barracks in October of 1983." Hmmm. Soooooo....he's an alleged truck-bombing planner. Well, maybe that was just a one time thing? Um, probably not. Remember, the 1980s were when Iran was wanting to go all terrorist on the United States' ass. And there he was, leading the charge from the Prime Minister throne or whatever it is they have over there to sit their sandy asses on.

Remember when Iran took all of those US folks hostage back in 1979. When interviewed in 1981, Mousavi's take on it was "It was the beginning of the second stage of our revolution. It was after that we discovered our true Islamic identity." I see. Oh, and he also appointed a guy to be the ambassador to Damascus who was the main truck bombing planner guy and who coordinated the taking of Lebanese hostages in his spare time. (And one of the coordinators of the whole 1979 hostage taking fiasco over there in Iran? Allegedly and assumed to be none other than I'm A Dinner Jacket himself. Birds of a feather, these folks are, I'm tellin' ya.)

Those sorts of extra curricular activities got him noticed by Mousavi who then put him in charge of the Interior Ministry which seemed to be rather down on democracy. He also has referred to the US as "The Great Satan". Hey, at least he knows we're great, so I can't really complain about that content. Oh, but I can complain that he's just like I'm A Dinner Jacket in that he has publicly stated that he would like to see Israel annihilated from the map.

Yeah, I'm not so much thinking that this Mousavi guy is the Changey McOptimism that he's been portrayed to be in the media. He sounds almost exactly like Dinner Jacket. Only not so much of an overt and blatant jackass.

So this is all where my confusion lies. I don't understand why everyone thinks this Mousavi guy is so great. I don't understand why people seem to be acting as if the President of Iran actually wields any real power. I don't understand why this has been portrayed as an injustice of a democratic election process. The Supreme Leader has final say over who the Council of Guardians approves to even RUN for President, so doesn't that kind of give everyone a hint that the result was fixed before it even started? I can see folks being upset that it's not the democratic society that Iran wants to say that it is. But this election is nothing new as it's been like that for a while. But why all of the support for Mousavi? He's not different, he's not change, he'd have no power, so who cares who is President? It certainly doesn't seem like anything to go out and get yourself killed over because at the end of the day, what the Supreme Leader wants is what the Supreme Leader gets. So if anyone can shed some light on what I"m missing here and why the swooning masses over the Dinner Jacket twin there, I'd really appreciate it.

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I'm A Dinner Jacket and the Fraudulent Election

If you're going to rig a country's election or if you're going to orchestrate a completely fraudulent election (custom made to look like an honest-to-goodness, real election), you're probably doing so for more than one reason but with likely only one goal. That goal would be "to win". Wait. Actually, that goal would be "to be declared the winner" as you haven't really won anything. And the reasons that you're doing that are because a) you're an a-hole and, b) you knew you were going to lose. Regardless of the reasons, if you're going to go ahead and fake the whole thing up so that you can stay in power, it would probably be a good idea to at least wait a reasonable amount of time after the polls close before you declare yourself the winner. I mean, after all, when there are almost 40,000,000 paper ballots to be counted by hand, your saying, "I win!" only 12 hours after the polls close is going to draw some scrutiny. A little bit.

Welcome to Iran! Meet the President of Iran, a one Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Behold! That name is obviously a mouthful, but the correct pronunciation comes easily if you can remember that it sounds strikingly similar to "I'm a dinner jacket." (It was recently pointed out to me that "Aqua dinner jacket" kind of sounds closer to the real thing. It's still kind of a toss up, but I'll concede that "Aqua dinner jacket" is closer sounding. It's also quite a bit gayer sounding.) If you still can't remember how to pronounce it, you can always go with the reliable ol' standby: Ferret Face.

I'm a Ferret Faced Dinner Jacket was believed to be trailing in the polls to his most formidable opponent, a one Mir Hossein Mousavi. (You can attempt to pronounce that with some clever little mnemonic as we've done with Dinner Jacket, or you can just go with another ol' standby: Mr. Completely Unpronounceable. Or just MCP. Your choice. Both refer to the same guy, the seemingly actual winner who is now the seemingly designated loser.) There was a pretty large turnout at the polls as well. Usually when people are going for the status quo, they don't turn out in droves to support that. Usually a high turnout at the polls means that folks want change and they want it bad enough to get up off of their sandy rear end and go vote for it en masse.

So you can imagine the "surprise" when only 12 hours after the polls closed, final results were announced by authorities who do that sort of announcing and they said Ferret Face wins. For the sake of something to compare the timing of that announcement to, in recent past elections, it has taken at least twice as long to count up all of the votes. Oh, yeah. Did I mention they count them by hand? They do. Did I mention that the ballot counters have bionic limbs? Yeah, they don't. So there's pretty much no way that 39,200,000 ballots were all counted in about 12 hours. That's about 3,266,666 an hour. 54,444 per minute. 907 per second. I was previously unaware of the speed at which Iranians can count election ballots, some of which had write-in candidates which are also supposed to be counted. Has someone contacted the Guinness Book of World Records because I'm pretty sure that this is one. The Fastest Ballot Counting Nation. It can go in the section next to all of the miraculous achievements by the platform shoe wearing, porn loving, ladies glasses donning dictator of North Korea, Kim Jong IL. His feats include hitting a hole in one the very first time he ever swung a golf club and making eleven, yes eleven, eleven hole in ones in ONE round of golf.

Correct. All of those achievements will be found in the fiction section.

What's the hurry, Dinner Jacket? I mean, if you're going to rig your election, you already know that you're going to win. YOU were the one who rigged it. There's no need to be nervous that you might end up losing when you've fixed the outcome. So why not pace yourself a little bit more? Why not drag the ballot counting out for a while so that there wouldn't be so much distrust and suspicion about whether or not your really rapid results are even real? Because now you've got a mess on your hands. You've got people rioting in the streets (and I'm not talking some wussy rioting like the losers down in LA were doing when the Lakers, led by Kobe Bryant, the rapist, won the NBA Championship), you've got 100,000 people marching through Tehran in protest. It all has a very Tiananmen-y Square-ish feel to it, which worries me.

The Iranian government (if that's what you insist on calling it) has different levels and it makes it difficult to really know who is making the decisions that are made. Dinner Jacket is the President. But they also have what they call a "supreme leader". Behold! A Supreme leader!

Of Iran! The Supreme leader of Iran! For cryin' out loud. Behold!

That's better. That's a one Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. As his title implies, he is the leader and a supreme one at that. His say is final when it comes to all matters in Iran. He didn't seem to think that there was a problem with having the candidate that he endorsed win the election. He said it was a "divine assessment." No word on who or what was responsible for that assessment, but I'm just going to assume that it's him. He has just announced that there's going to be a recount. And for some reason, people seem to think that this is a good thing. (And actually, it would be if it were in any way real or genuine.)

Let me spell this out for those who think that something is going to change with a recount. The Grand Poobah over there, that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei guy (who I shall begin referring to as AAK), he supports Dinner Jacket. If he thought that Dinner Jacket was going to lose the election, what do you think he'd do as someone in the position of Supreme leader? Yes! He'd make damn sure that his guy won! He wouldn't take his time doing that or anything, but that's what he'd do and it would appear that is what he has done. So why anyone would think that a ballot recount by a guy who had to have been in on the (alleged) fraudulent election results fiasco is going turn out any different the second time. Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if they do a recount and then say "Oh, we made a mistake. Dinner Jacket didn't win with 62.6 percent of the vote. Yeah, he won with EIGHTY. Thank you, come again!"

Unfortunately, I don't see the outcome of this election changing. Remember, Aqua Dinner Jacket is a Holocaust denier and when he spoke in the US last year he declared that Iran "does not have homosexuality. I do not know where you heard that we do." All I'm saying is that his credibility is right around a little bit less than zero. And as I write this, seven people have been killed so far. Of course the story is that those 7 tried to attack a "military location", but if you believe that then perhaps you might want to start wearing some of that riot gear that the Iranian authorities are wearing. You know, just to protect your melted ice cream soft head from your own self! I have the feeling that the number of folks killed will hit double digits today and only go up from there as it would seem that a Tienanmen Square like debacle is entirely possible.

Good luck, you guys. While I commend your standing up for the democratic process and what is right, don't do anything dumb that's going to end up with your body being riddled with bullets. This is one of the instances in which I don't think that the 'safety in large numbers' strategy applies.

And this story wouldn't be complete without mentioning how much the media sucks. This is a huge deal. CNN used to be the leader in breaking news. Not so much anymore. The folks over there at ReadWriteWeb wrote a piece (which you can view via that link) stating that "Hours after Iranian police began clashing with tens of thousands of people in the street, the top story on CNN.com remains peoples' confusion about the switch from analog TV signals." But you know where you could find up to date, breaking information on the story? Twitter. Good Lord. We're as doomed as the Iranian election is.

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I'm A Dinner Jacket = I'm A Dumbass

So, Iran test fired a few missiles the other day. Ballistic missles. The kind that can carry nukes. Joy! Yes. There were about nine of them. Yep, nine. You know, just to remind us what a freaking crazy ass sand country Iran really is (as if we needed reminding). Actually, it's not the entire country that's nuts. It's mainly their president, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad (aka I'm A Dinner Jacket), is the crazed one. Then again, ALL of the Iranian Presidents seem to be a bit crazed. Hmmm. I see a trend.

Regardless, the point of Iran test firing a bunch of missiles was, well, it's hard to tell. Probably part of it had to do with just I'm A Dinner Jacket's need to let the world know that they're over there and they've got missiles. And probably another part of it is to show that they're capable of reaching Israel (a country that Dinner Jacket has expressed a desire to "wipe off the face of the Earth." Nice.). Oh, but of course all of their nuclear power research that they've been trying to do over there has anything to do with their missiles. Oh, no, of course it doesn't. They just want to build nuclear reactors and harness nuclear energy as a power source. You know, like electricity. (Uh-huh. Well, I guess that any day now we can expect PG&E (Pacific Gas & Electric Co.) to start shooting missiles off as well, right?)

Probably the main part of the whole display of Dinner Jacket's manhood (I like to refer to the missiles as his "penis extension") was to tell the world that not only do they have missiles, but they know how to use them. It's just too bad that they couldn't learn how to use PhotoShop as well. At least then when they sent out pictures of their missile launches, other people might not know that they had been altered. Morons.

From the fine, struggling to stay afloat, folks over there at The New York Times, "As news spread across the world of Iran’s provocative missile tests, so did an image of four missiles heading skyward in unison. Unfortunately, it appeared to contain one too many missiles, a point that had not emerged before the photo was used on the front pages of The Los Angeles Times, The Financial Times, The Chicago Tribune and several other newspapers as well as on BBC News, MSNBC, Yahoo! News, NYTimes.com and many other major news Web sites." One too many? WTF?

Photos showing the missiles firings were originally distributed by the Agence France-Presse, who said that "it obtained the image from the Web site of Sepah News, the media arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards." Fair enough. One of those photos showed four missiles being deployed.

The next day, the Associated Press distributed a photo which looked incredibly similar to the one above. Only the one that the AP had was missing one of the missiles. Oh, really? Really.

Interesting. Well, since then, at least Agence France-Presse has said that the four-missile version photo was “apparently digitally altered by Iranian state media." They also said that, "The fourth missile “has apparently been added in digital retouch to cover a grounded missile that may have failed during the test.” And, thanks to a lovely graphic from the folks over there at the New York Times, the alleged Photoshopping is clearly illustrated to show that the Photoshopping is not alleged. It's real.

You know, if I'm in charge of a sand country and I'm trying to make the world think that my country is capable of launching a bunch of missiles and I'm going to try and hide the fact that at least one of the missiles failed to launch, I'm going to erase the missile from the picture completely! Either that or I'm going to make sure that my minions or my endentured servants or whatever they are know how to use freaking Photoshop so that I don't end up looking like a sneaky, weaselly, moron! But that's just me. Obviously.

Seriously, what a dumbass thing to do. That right there shows the immensity of Dinner Jacket's ego. Look, if you have four missiles and three of them fire and one of them don't, then you have 75% percent of your missiles firing. If that was a pie and someone gave you 75% of it, you'd have a lot of pie! (Mmmmm....pie.) There doesn't seem like a lot of shame in 75% of your missiles (which may or may not be able to be loaded with nuclear warheads to destroy neighboring countries) firing and 25% of your missiles not firing. Especially when there's only four (in the picture). But for ol' Dinner Jacket over there, he had to have everything "perfect". A little "too" perfect, eh, Dinner Jacket?

It's not like PhotoShop doesn't have a tutorial with it or anything like that. They couldn't have asked someone? Oh, wait. Maybe that was the problem right there! Maybe they tried to ask customer service and ended up on hold for so long that they just gave up and hung up! Or maybe they called customer service and when the tech finally answered their call, they couldn't understand him! (You know, because of all of the outsourcing of call centers to foreign lands.) "Hay-LOW. My. Nnnname. Is. JIM-my! HOW. May I he-LP YOU to-DAY?" "Um, I don't think your name is really Jimmy." "Oh, but YES! My. Nnnname. Is. JIM-my! HOW. May I he-LP YOU to-DAY?"

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Mrs. I'm A Dinner Jacket

By now, I'm sure that you're vaguely familiar with the narcissistic, probably crazy, assuredly unstable President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad (aka I'm A Dinner Jacket). And while we've heard plenty about him, we really don't know a lot about his family do we? Wait. What? He has a family? Apparently so.

Dinner Jacket has a daughter and two sons. His daughter, well, she's female! And while that might not sound a whole lot like "information", given how difficult it was for me to dig up anything on these people, it's definitely information. It's a little useless, but when you have nothing, you'll take just about anything and run with it. (Oh, you'll run like the wind in cases like this one!) His daughter is apparently an electrical engineer. She might have a name, she might not. I couldn't find one. So, electrical engineer it is! That's all I know.

Dinner Jacket's oldest son is Mahdi. He is a civil engineer. (Dinner Jacket is also a civil engineer, which I find ironic as he seems to be lacking a bit in the "civility" department.) Dinner Jacket's other son's name is Alireza. He is studying to be a mechanical engineer, thus completing the engineering trifecta of the Ahmedinejad tribe. He is also said to be an "Internet addict". Yeah, well, join the club.

That's all I've got. Oh, wait! The mother of those children! Right. I knew I was forgetting someone. Mrs. I'm A Dinner Jacket. Of course. Her name? Her name.......her name.....um, yeah, we don't know it. What about what she looks like? Looks.....looks.....um, yeah, we don't know what she looks like either. Wait. What?

Correct. The first name of Mrs. I'm A Dinner Jacket is unknown and we have no clue as to what she looks like. At first, I just figured that all of this was Dinner Jacket's weirdness shining through. I mean, being President of a country and having a wife whose name and general appearance are not known to the public? Well, that sort of a practice has Dinner Jacket's name written all over it. But it's not totally his doing.

Apparently, according to a Time Magazine article from Sept. 7, 2006, deeply "traditional Muslim men consider it more honorable to keep their wives out of the public sphere." And, at least since 1979, the leaders of Iran have adhered to that practice; kind of to the extreme if you're asking, oh, just about anyone. The article also said, "To this day, no one has any idea what Mrs. Ayatullah Khomeini looked like." I find that freaking amazing. How? How is that possible? How can you be the wife of a ruler/president/crazy leader of a country but yet no one knows what you look like? How is that possible?!

I'll show you how. I'd like to introduce you to Mrs. I'm A Dinner Jacket. Behold!


Are you freaking kidding me?! THAT is his wife? Are we sure? Is HE sure? How would he know?! How would anyone know? That is un-believable.

The photo was taken by one of the folks over at the German magazine "Bild". I don't know if the Dinner Jackets consented to this photo or if it was taken with a really long telephoto lens, but I am grateful for the photo, however it came to be obtained. (Interestingly enough, "Bild" means "picture" in German, thus making it an appropriate name for the magazine as it's basically a tabloid. And while this may be tabloid fodder in Germany, I just can't picture Dinner Jacket and his lovely tarp covered bride gracing the pages of the National Enquirer.)

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I'm A Dinner Jacket

President Bush had issued a statement in regard to what the US (which somehow became the world's policeman, defeater of evil and the enforcer of truth and justice) has in mind when and if the time comes to deal with Iran. See, the deal with Iran, aside from them hating us (and our not being overly fond of them. Yeah, that hostage thing in '79 really hurt some feelings.) is that Iran is run by a crazy person.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is the President of Iran. His name can be difficult to pronounce, so here's a little tip. First name: Mah-MOOD. You can remember that by thinking about your mood at the time or you can pretend your mother is a cow and she just mooed. Your choice. Last name: Ahmadinejad. The easiest way to remember how to pronounce that is that it sounds remarkably similar to "I'm a Dinner Jacket". Ah-ma-dinn-e(r)-jahd(ket). I'm a Dinner Jacket. Granted, he's always wearing that sporty Members Only windbreaker all the time and NOT a dinner jacket, but you'll immediately sense something is wrong if you hear yourself uttering the words, "Mahmoud MembersOnlyDahd."

President Bush said that "all options are on the table" when it comes to options for dealing with Iran if they insist on continuing to build a nuclear weapon while they are denying that they are building a nuclear weapon. Now, before I get into the "all options are on the table", a word about the nuclear weapon building going-ons in Iran. While a sand country run by a crazy man is never a good situation no matter who you are, you have to assess the situation within the context that it occurs. In this case, the competency and effectiveness of the nuclear weaponry building in Iran. Here is a photo from Time magazine which depicts a couple of Iranian "scientists" (I'm using that term loosely. They could be the janitors for all I know.) working on a "reactor". (Again, using the term loosely. VERY loosely.) What the hell is it?

While it's definitely a good idea to be concerned about Iran or any other sand country with a crazy leader getting a nuclear weapon, the picture above definitely means that I won't be losing any sleep over it. Let's see, the floor is glowing purple, there is a red splotch on the wall, a folding chair or table against the other wall, towels on the floor and two guys wearing janitor coveralls with head coverings that were probably used during the filming of the OR scene in the last M*A*S*H episode. Yep, I sleep just fine after seeing that.

So nothing is off the table, eh, GW? That's good. Because there are a lot of ways that we have to choose from to settle this thing and I have some suggestions.

• Rock, Paper, Scissors (Someone explain to GW that "scissors" is not the same as "gun".)



• Potato sack races (preferably on the White House lawn)
  
  


• Battleship (If Battleship isn't available, you can always play US Nuclear Warship vs. Iranian tugboats. Same outcome.)
  



• H.O.R.S.E. (Across the desert, over Tehran, off a couple of turbans, nothing but net.)
  
  



• Who can hold their breath the longest? (They both have so much hot air, this one could take a while.)

• And what is definitely my first choice and what could possibly be my all time favorite: Guitar Hero Showdown!

OK, seriously, how cool would that be? Very, that is correct. Look, I kid, but really, the last thing we need is a repeat of "The Attempted Democracizing of the Middle East Through the Overthrow of a Crazy Dictator" debacle of yore. So although all options are on the table, could you guys at least just TRY the Guitar Hero thing? Just once? It can't hurt. Hey, the Aerosmith version comes out this month! Maybe wait for that and then play? (Oh, hey, that's right. That release IS later this month. Hmmm....Well, not only could Guitar Hero - Aerosmith be responsible for two countries coming together, it could also end up being responsible for the temporary disappearance of a certain blogger. But in only the most awesome of ways that only Guitar Hero can provide.)

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