NYT: Byrnes disobeyed order to end affair

Okay, now this is making a little more sense:

Via the New York Times, General Disobeyed Orders to End Affair, Officials Say:

A major reason the general, Kevin P. Byrnes, was dismissed as head of the Army Training and Doctrine Command was that the inspector general found that he had violated the direct order from the Army chief of staff, Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the case is still being adjudicated.

Army officials disclosed the details of the inspector general's inquiry to explain the unusual decision to relieve a four-star officer with a distinguished record.

While adultery is a violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, most people are scratching their heads wondering why it would merit relief of a four-star command. Disobeying a direct order from the chief of staff, on the other hand, is a better fit for demotion.

Anyhow, on to other more hilarious matters, the Ferret Olympics have been forced to change their name after the United States Olympic Committee threatened a lawsuit. Apparently, the olympians are worried that... what? That the "Ferret Olympics" will steal their thunder?

Whatever the reason, the competition's new name is the "Ferret Agility Trials," which aside from having the acronym "FAT" is also an incredibly funny term in its own right. There must be a lot of people who actually spend their time training their domestic weasel to escape from a paper bag (yes, that really is an event).

Now, you may be asking, "Bro, what do these stories have in common?" Well, that's a very good question, and I'll let anyone who has an answer to that address it in the comments section, because I have no idea.

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UPDATE: The Centrist at JAG Central is following this issue closely. Check out his latest treatment here while I send a trackback ping.
UPDATE: Open Post at Mudville. Thanks, Greyhawks!

Sunday evening rain

It's raining now. Thunderclouds rolled in over Fort Knox quickly, and you can hear them rumbling as the lightning gets closer.

Just over an hour ago it was sunny and clear, and I was out for an afternoon run. I've decided to buckle down heavily on running, since there are no other soldiers in my section anymore. Not a single other person wears a uniform to work, which in my mind sort of defeats the purpose. I've never been crazy about running even on good days, and without additional motivation, I tend to avoid it. But I can't let that happen, so I adopted my own additional running PT regime.

This afternoon I ran up past the elementary school, past Fifth and Fourth Avenues where all the colonels and their families live, and around Brooks Field, the central parade grounds for the post. It was hot, and sweat started rolling down my face almost immediately.

As I got to the far corner of the field, running alongside the Garrison Headquarters building, the bugle sounded -- fifteen minutes till Retreat. Two MPs pulled up across the flagpole as I headed back along the south side of the field, and one hopped out with the blank artillery round they were to fire off from the antique tank near the pole. I stopped and watched for a few minutes while one of them clambered up the side of the brown tank, popped open the gunner's hatch, and slid inside. The five-minute warning sounded, and I turned back toward home and began running again.

A group of soldiers were playing frisbee in the field in front of Recruiting Command, and as I reached the road that leads back to the barracks, I noticed that they'd all come to attention, facing back toward the flagpole. There it was, retreat. I spun on a heel and stood at attention. I couldn't hear "Retreat" and "To the Colors" being played, but I knew they were sounding, since the distinctive BOOM of the artillery blank roared over the treetops and roofs.

Now I'm back here, and God is sending his own thunderous booms down on post, along with driving rain. The air has that eerie, electric, yellow quality that happens when everything is ionized by a storm. I've taken a shower and changed, and I'm thinking about what will go on this week. There are sports teams to write previews for, a column to whip up, paper to lay out... bills to pay, a coolant system to flush...

And maybe a set of orders to look at. My orders to Fort Bliss were unceremoniously cancelled about a week ago, and now I have no idea where I'll be heading next -- only that I'll be going somewhere. We'll see what happens.

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USA Today: Gen. Byrnes dismissed over "romance"

Looks like everyone's having a go at the General Byrnes situation. Speculation is rampant. I've seen suggestions ranging from "maybe the affair wasn't with a woman" to "he was part of a coup."

Here's USA Today's latest treatment:

WASHINGTON -- The four-star Army general who was fired this week had been romantically involved with a civilian woman while separated from his wife, his attorney said Wednesday.

Lt. Col. Dave Robertson, the attorney for Gen. Kevin Byrnes, said the woman was not connected to the military and the relationship has ended. He challenged the severity of the punishment for Byrnes, 52, who was three months from retirement when he was fired as head of the Training and Doctrine Command. He had served for 36 years.

One thing you may notice in many of the stories on this subject -- lots of people are writing almost the exact same lede:

"In a rare move, the Army said..." USA Today
"The Army has abruptly relieved the four-star general..." New York Times
"In a rare move, the Army relieved a four-star general of his command..." Washington Post
"In an extraordinary move, the Army sacked a four-star general..." CBS News, Associated Press
"In an unusual move, the Army relieves Gen. Kevin P. Byrnes..." Daily Press
"In a bold move, the US Army has fired a four-star general..." Capital News 9

James Joyner of Outside the Beltway thinks there could be more afoot than simply an affair:

"I can't imagine that a separated man having a consensual relationship with someone not under his command would be cause for relief, let alone at the 4-star level. I suspect something else is going on here, although I have no idea what.

One possibility--and this is pure speculation--is that the relationship in question was not with a woman. I note that his attorney's language was gender neutral as was the reporter's."

However, language used in other releases seems to make it clear that the alleged (a wonderful journalistic butt-covering word) affair was with a civilian woman, and that the general had been seperated from his wife for nearly a year and a half.

"Socialite" and non-native English-speaker Arianna Huffington is certain that it's a moralistic message from the Bush White House that "bad sex" will not be tolerated among top officers, and uses the occasion to point out that it's more fun to refer to top administration officials with a "long-E" sound at the end, as in "Bushie" and "Rummy." Maybe it's the several semesters and Army training in editing in me, but I find use of such weird, familiar terms in a "news" item to be grating.

And of course there's this theory:

Russian Intelligence Analysts are reporting this evening that an apparent coup is taking place in the United States and that both Russian and Chinese Forces have been ordered to their highest non-nuclear defense status...

One of the Coup Leaders in the United States, General Kevin P. Byrnes, and who is also one of their top Military Generals, has been arrested and taken prisoner by US Counter-Coup Forces, and as we can read as reported by the Newsday News Service in their article titled "Senior general is relieved of duties as commander of key Army training organization."

The best part of this whole story is that Byrnes was scheduled to retire (after 36 years of unblemished service, it's said) just two months from now. I'm sure he'll still get to appear on the cable news networks as a "military expert" even if he did engage in some indiscretion, and he'll still be getting boatloads more in retirement pay than I'm making right now.

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UPDATE: Open Post at the Mudville Gazette.

Army Photoblogging

While I'm admittedly a Class-A pogue at the moment, there are definitely times where I get to go out and take pictures that are very Army. Here are a couple I did this past week:


These guys are lieutenants taking a dinner break during the final FTX (field training exercise) for the Armor Officers' Basic Course. I liked the sign in the foreground, because it's evocative of a personal rule I have: if there are tanks rolling around doing stuff, move in the opposite direction.


This soldier is working on a .50-caliber machine gun mounted on a Humvee. I'm pretty sure he's probably cleaning it out, since Checkpoint 37 isn't an actual range.


Tanks, as invincible as they look, do break. I've heard it said that some folks have had more reliable Fiats. Anyway, this mechanic was giving directions to the driver of the M88 engineer vehicle (on the right) so he and his buddies could get at a broken piece of some kind in the tracks. Also, another rule is that tank repair must take place in about two and a half feet of mud.

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New book!

I got my hands on a copy of "The Last True Story I'll Ever Tell / An Accidental Soldier's Account of the War in Iraq" by John Crawford today. Working for a military newspaper definitely has some perks.

I'm looking forward to reading it -- the first few pages have been gripping, to say the least.

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Luna Moth

I found this luna moth outside the barracks on my way home from football practice yesterday evening. I shot it with a manual fixed 50mm lens at an aperture of f2.8, I think.

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Army relieves general of major command

Via ARNEWS:

AUGUST 8, 2005: On Aug. 8, the Chief of Staff of the Army directed the relief of Gen. Kevin P. Byrnes from his position as Commanding General, United States Army Training and Doctrine Command. The investigation upon which this relief is based is undergoing further review to determine the appropriate final disposition of this matter.

No reason has been given yet. Keep an eye out for mainstream media reports on this.

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UPDATE: Open Post at the Mudville Gazette.

UPDATE: Reuters reports Byrnes is being relieved for an investigation into "personal misconduct of a sexual nature."

Shameless Plugs

Check out these blogs -

My old next-door neighbor and supervison, Sgt. Salemonz presents Salemonz News Service. He'll be deploying to Iraq from Fort Hood, Texas soon, so be sure to keep up on this guy.

Another (anonymous) pal of mine has started Muzik-Amanto, and has asked me to contribute. He goes by the name of Jan Korda.

We now return you to your regularly-scheduled blogging.

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Football season once again

It's football season again, which means it's time for me to spend some quality time in the Road Shark. The poor car's been causing me no end of problems since I've had it, but I think it's finally healthy again. It just took two guys (one, not me, with a working knowledge of Chevy engines), a floor jack, and a Leatherman with a large flathead attachment, plus an hour on a sunny Sunday afternoon.

I reregistered the Shark Friday, and then saved a bunch of money on car insurance.

Saturday, I pointed the Camaro's nose out U.S. Route 60, through places called Hog's Wallow, Garfield, and Hodgensville to Breckinridge County High School, where the Fort Knox Eagles were scrimmaging against the homestanders. It wasn't a serious game, just the coaches working their teams out on each other.

They were running goal line plays when I found the high school, and the locals were out in force, sitting in the shade on the home team's side. The Knox contingent had set up on the opposite side of the field in the bleachers, some holding green and white umbrellas to stave off the midday sun.

"Do you know much about cameras?"

I was putting my office-issued D1H together, putting the 200-meter zoom onto the body. A middle-aged football mom was holding a Canon and looking at me quizzically.

"What are you having trouble with?" I asked.

"Well," she said, looking at her camera. "They turn out okay when the games are during the day, but the ones during the nighttime games always turn out blurry."

"Not much you can do about that," I said, trying to line up the rings on the camera body and the bulky sports zoom. "Try buying higher-speed film, like 800 or even 1200. It's always going to be tough."

She laughed nervously, and I said, "Well, time to go make some money."

I ran into one of the assistant coaches, who spends duty hours as a staff sergeant in Fort Knox's 1st Armor Training Brigade. He gave me a half hug when he ducked off the field.

I shot a series of photos on the next couple plays, caught the new quarterback running a pump fake, and one of the senior wide receivers breaking left with a catch and running into the end zone.

Parents in the booster club came by while I was jotting down notes and got their say in on upcoming fundraisers and the latest season gossip.

Translating what you see on a football field into some kind of usable information for a season preview can be difficult and touchy. Without knowing what calls coaches are making, without knowing what kinds of instruction they're giving their guys, how are you supposed to decipher what happens between two sweaty lines of sun-baked high-school kids wearing plastic pads and numbered jerseys?

Today, I caught the end of the Knox team's practice. The head coach was invisible when I first sat down by the practice field, surrounded by the exhausted piles of bones and sweat forming up around him. Other coaches took up positions around the line, backing a player up here, getting a lineman down into a better crouch there, showing a receiver the route he was to run over there.

I wrote this on my notepad while I waited on the bleachers:

The team set up for a short pass play to the left... at the whistle, both offense and defense snapped into action. The quarteback threw a short-range bullet to his receiver, whose arms stretched out during his grab as he dodged around a guard. As the defense swarmed the wiry receiver, their hits knocked the ball from his hands.

"Fumble!" The call came from several places at once, and free defenders piled on the errant football.

"You've got to protect the ball!" The coach's voice boomed across the field, and I could clearly hear both patience and weary frustration in his voice from my seat in the overgrown bleachers on the sidelines.

The other coaches made some on-the-spot corrections to the teams' plays and positions, and three staccato whistle blasts announced that it was time for a water break.

Afterwards, I sat down with the head coach in the locker room for a run-down on what to expect from Knox this season. He spoke in his interview voice -- distinct from his on-field coaching voice, or his joking-with-other-coaches voice -- and explained the team's youth, the handful of experienced players, and a couple of the hard games coming up early in the regular season schedule.

It's been a long summer, and I'm glad football's back. It's going to mean my Friday nights are taken up with traveling, which I don't mind, and football, which I like. This'll be my second season covering Fort Knox, and I'm hoping that I'll be better-equipped to handle a sports beat this time around. I'm definitely more excited than I was this time last year. Wish me luck.

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Photographer shot outside Britney Spears' home

Via Drudge, dateline Malibu:

MALIBU, Calif. (AP) - A photographer was shot in the leg with a pellet gun outside Britney Spears' home Saturday evening, authorities said.

It was unclear who fired the plastic pellet as the photographer was staking out an event at the pop singer's Malibu home, Sheriff's Department Lt. Steve Smith said. He said firefighters bandaged the man's leg and he went to a hospital.

"It could've been somebody driving by, walking by, we have no idea where it came from," Smith said.

The photographer, identified as Brad Diaz, was about 200 yards from the home and outside Spears' long driveway when he was hit, Smith said.

A message left with Spears' publicist was not immediately returned Saturday night.

Okay. When you quit laughing, let's take a moment to examine this story closely. The guy was shot with a plastic pellet gun, and the projectile struck him in the leg. This, poor old Brad clearly thought, was a serious enough event to call 911 (why else would firefighters have bandaged his leg?).

Look, Brad. If you've wound up at the bottom of the journalism tide pool that is candid celebrity photography, I'd say you'd better be willing to put up with the risks involved. Anyone staking out Johnny Knoxville's house, for example, should be ready to put up with being chased around by half-naked men piloting souped-up golf carts with cow catchers on the front end.

The only reason people who write and shoot for those loathsome tabloids you find at the checkout aisle in the supermarket aren't busy having the pants sued off them is because a lawsuit makes whatever lies and unflattering pictures they've published a matter of public record. Celebrities don't want to deal with the hassle of taking these morons to court.

Of course, while Mr. Diaz certainly deserved a pop in the leg with a pellet gun (buddies and I would do the same thing at work to each other with the frighteningly-realistic pellet guns you could buy off-post in Korea), I think Britney Spears deserves whatever happens to her, as well, for subjecting us to years of poppy "noise" that only barely fits the definition of music and which only ever served as vehicle for her pederast-inspiring videos.

They're all just another good argument for nuclear holocaust, as Bill Hicks might have said.

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50k

A Healthy Alternative to Work just recieved its 50,000th hit! The visitor is from New York State and uses Lightpath.net, and he or she found my humble home through Blackfive's post on Over There.

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Thursday morning ramble

I typed the subject of this post before writing it, since I know I've got no particular thesis to explore or advance. This blogging thing can get frustrating, particularly when there's so much going on and only finite opportunities to talk about it.

First -- the news from Iraq, at least according to the NPR reports I've been listening to on the radio back in the room, are dire.

Steven Vincent, blogger and freelance journalist in Iraq, has been murdered, execution style. Probably by those he criticized in his July 31 article (free subscription required) in the New York Times.

Twenty-three Marines have been killed in the past three days in Iraq, 14 of whom were killed by an improvised explosive device (or roadside bomb) in the Euphrates River Valley.

Be sure to check out Blackfive and Greyhawk for the good news coming out of the Middle East.

On the political front, I've steered well clear of the Robert Bolton/John Roberts nominations. Not only are both incredibly predictable, they're also boring enough to make one's ears bleed. However, I did see this article in USA Today on the possibility of an opposition-supported pseudo "Religious Test" in the case of John Roberts' nomination. Check this:

Summing up near the end of the lengthy story, The Post took note of a fact it considered remarkable. This is an exact quote: "Roberts certainly looks the part of a conservative. He had a priest over to his home for Christmas Eve." Aha! Gotcha! Imagine The Post printing this: "So-and-so certainly looks the part of a liberal. He invited a gay man to his house for Christmas Eve." Editors would have gone screaming up the walls at this juxtaposition. But consorting with a priest -- that's suspicious.

Wow. I guess it's understandable for the public to be afraid of Catholics. After all, there are all those bishops and cardinals who, when they see how most Americans eat meat on Lenten Fridays and use contraception, issue decrees exhorting their followers to kill those offenders who dare slight the Catechism.

Oh, whoops. That's not Catholics. It's someone else... I can't remember who, though.

I rag on Christianity in politics a fair bit, but I think the rules are pretty simple. Anyone should be allowed to hold and practice his beliefs -- as long as it doesn't interfere with anyone else's. Roberts has been working as a lawyer and in the government for quite a while now, and I'm reasonably certain that he knows where and where not to voice his own religious beliefs.

And besides, the fact that the opposition to his nomination is raising hue and cry over his religious beliefs at all seems to me to indicate that they're incredibly ignorant of what a judge or justice is. I was under the impression that justices -- particularly the Supreme Court kind -- made decisions not based on their own personal beliefs or feelings, but on the preponderance of evidence put before them by the parties involved. I'm no lawyer, so someone with more schooling in this is welcome to correct me. But isn't that why we haven't had a ruling on why green is better than purple?

I'm not a huge fan of Republicans. But there's no way to head to the other side when Democrats are behaving like toddlers having a tantrum. The Senate majority wants to do something? "NO!" The president wants to do something? "NO!" Do you want to know what those things they wanted to do were? "NO!"

Here's something by NR's Byron York on this issue.

Politics are really becoming intolerable. I'm really glad football season is starting up again.

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UPDATE: Open Post at Mudville. Also, I've added the "Email Post" tool into the byline, so if you read something here you really enjoyed (or hated), you can email it to your friends and share the moment with them. Won't that be useful?

Rafael Palmeiro - A Babe Amongst Wolves?

Okay, here's the commentary I wound up doing for the actual sports section.

Palmeiro must have
been led astray
By SPC. IAN BOUDREAU
TURRET SPORTS EDITOR

What to do with Rafael Palmeiro?

The Baltimore Orioles first baseman, who testified before a congressional panel five months ago that he had never, ever, used steroids, has changed his tune -- now it's "I've never knowingly done steroids."

The new line came Monday, after Palmeiro was suspended for 10 days for coming up positive for steroid use in the Major Leagues' new drug-testing program.

Can we coin a new phrase here? Let's call it "pulling a Bonds." It goes like this:

"What? There were STEROIDS in those syringes I was injecting into my pectoral muscles? I thought it was vitamin C!"

These poor Major League Baseball players are clearly being victimized. Someone is tricking them into using illicit substances, and I think I know who it is.

It's Jose Canseco. After the congressional hearings on steroid use in MLB, he needed to make sure all those crazy accusations he made in his tell-all book "Juiced" were accurate, so he got himself a black Chevy G20 van and has been driving around ever since, looking for naive players and offering them candy and rides.

Can't you imagine Canseco pulling up to the Baltimore locker room doors, opening the side of his van, and asking the doe-eyed players to help him search for his lost puppy dog?

Who could blame them?

Yes, these helpless, innocent professional athletes don't know any better but to accept Canseco's invitation into his van, wherein he hits them with the chloroform and drives them off to Oakland, where he starts them on a cruel and slavish regimen of anabolic steroids.

At least, that's how the "I didn't know" routine would have to run.

Is it really possible to believe, given the media and political spotlight steroids are currently in, that any professional athlete, let alone one with Cooperstown hopes, could be so blase about what he's using as a dietary supplement or exercise booster as to not care to find out where it came from or what was in it? Signs point to no.

It seems the primary concern at the moment is whether this suspension will hurt Palmeiro's chances at induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Some prominent sports writers are saying they'll vote for him anyway, based on the strength of his influence and his 3,000-hit, 500-home run record.

Three thousand hits is certainly a lot. But stats and numbers do not a Hall of Famer make, at least not completely.

Sorry to break out the sepia-toned lens here, but baseball is still considered to be "America's pastime." The Baseball Hall of Fame should be reserved for those players who truly embodied not only the ideals of baseball, but of everything good about America, too.

All politics aside, cheaters aren't people we've traditionally looked up to (at least not for the fact they cheated). And when it comes to steroids, it's a simple formula: steroids are against the rules of the game, and if you break the rules to get ahead, then you're cheating.

And if you cheat, you aren't someone I want in the Hall of Fame. The same goes for lying or passing the buck, and Palmeiro looks guilty on both counts. But he's hardly the first, and will by no means be the last potentially legendary player to have his record tarnished by drugs.

"The outlook wasn't brilliant for the Major League that day..."

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UPDATE: Open Post at Mudville, and Greyhawk oughtta like the final poetry reference.

To all you Lord of the Rings fans out there...

Peter Jackson, who created the acclaimed movie versions of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, didn't always deal in hobbits and fairies. No, my friends... the rotund and bearded New Zealander is also responsible for some of the most demented pieces of cinema ever to grace the silver screen.

One of those is "Dead Alive," which is considered by some to be the most gruesome movie ever. Gallon upon gallon of red syrup was used in the making of this much-darker version of "Army of Darkness," and it certainly shows the director's influences - which, after having watched the hilarious zombie splatter-fest, would have to be primarily the gorier sketches from Monty Python and Italian horror progenitor Lucio Fulci. It's certainly gross, but it's not the kind of horrifying movie you might expect if you've been (like me) watching a lot of George A. Romero movies lately.

Normally, in your stock-standard, playing-by-the-rules zombie movie, the only way to kill a zombie is to destroy its brain, or at least sever it from the rest of the body. This has given other zombie directors an opportunity to use copious amounts of offal, red corn syrup, and explosive prothesis. This wasn't good enough for Jackson. In "Dead Alive," each bit of each zombie must be liquified in order to be quelled in its search for living flesh.

Yes. That means that there are zombie pieces -- sometimes the parts you take out of the turkey before Thanksgiving -- crawling around trying to waylay our rather Oedipally-challenged hero, Lionel.

Fortunately, after Lionel's mother is bitten by a hideous Sumatran rat-monkey, he's eventually given a chance (after a creative and gruesome use of a lawnmower on his uncle's former party guests) to work out his Freudian mother-fixation and commit to his strangely prescient girlfriend. At least by the time the movie's over.

And by then, we, the audience, have seen Lionel take a zombie baby for a socially-awkward walk in the park (at first, he finds himself unable to do away with the zombies, and instead keeps them sedated in the basement, feeding them custard, which doesn't work too well for the zombies with nasty neck-wounds), a Catholic Kung-fu priest, the worst case of facial rug-burn ever, and the largest, most hideous ass ever to be committed to celluloid.

Gore and guts are crucial elements to any zombie movie, and they're usually used to convey to the audience how fragile the human being really is in the grand scheme of things. For Jackson, however, the blood and gore is used more for, well, interior decorating.

And it's not just the over-the-top rivers of goo that make this movie so outrageous as to be funny. The music, editing, timing, and dialogue all propel "Dead Alive" far beyond "Army of Darkness" into the ranks of the best horror farces ever.

Which, come to think of it, is a pretty sparse formation, really. Oh well.

I wouldn't exactly call this a date movie. And you'll need a very dark sense of humor (and probably a good dose of '80s desensitization) to get through this one laughing. If you qualify, it would be a lot of fun over a case of beer with five or six of your closest pals. But skip the Paul Newman's Own Salsa when it comes to choosing snacks.

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Possible sports commentary

This one really isn't very sports-related, but I whipped it up this morning after a couple cups of gravelly coffee. It's still a draft, but hey.

Truth in advertising getting scarce
By SPC. IAN BOUDREAU
TURRET SPORTS EDITOR

Over the weekend, I saw a television commercial for a toothbrush that is going to change oral hygiene forever.

At least, that's what the computer-generated animation would have me believe. You see, this particular toothbrush has special flanges that reach deep between each tooth as the user drags it back and forth across his dentition.

Deep within the handle (as is clearly illustrated by the graphics) is a device that sends some kind of electronic "pulses" into the head of the toothbrush. I'm not sure what these pulses do, but my theory is they're designed to confuse and terrify the bacteria and other gunk that cause cavities and halitosis.

I'm thinking the next model will come with an MP3 player and a satellite uplink. It'll cost as much as an iPod and Linkin Park will be in the commercial.

This isn't the first commercial to use these ridiculous animations. Many razor companies think they can improve on the classic design of the shaving razor by adding blades and "sensor strips."

You can watch the accompanying animations to see what these strips do: as they run along the user's face, they pull each whisker gently up out of its follicle, preparing it to be sliced by the blades that follow in its wake. Each subsequent blade chops off a bit more of the whisker (in the commercial, whiskers are very cooperative), which then recedes below the surface of the skin.

Apparently, this means anyone who buys this razor will get a closer shave than Batman's sidekick Robin.

One unique, but no less phony, approach was taken by a deodorant manufacturer. MTV's oh-so-lovable rebel, Bam Margera (who spends his time tormenting his family when he's not shilling DO) narrates as average guys in bright green t-shirts link arms to show the stink-stomping power of this company's latest brand of underarm deodorant. With the product's electrifying power, they are able to clothesline NFL players -- like Terrell Owens, who still isn't making enough money.

The energy drink Red Bull, I've heard, is capable of giving its drinkers the power of flight.

The worst offenders in the obviously-fake computer animation department are skin and hair care products. Have you seen these? As you shampoo with (insert name of new product here), magical globules made of vitamins, minerals, eye of newt, and Echinacea float down into your scalp, which absorbs them and in turn energizes each strand of hair with golden, life-giving energy. Go from Twisted Sister to Gwen Stefani in seconds.

I know we all have come to expect a certain amount of falsehood when it comes to advertising, but this is getting out of hand. It's as if we have to become members of some kind of hygienic cult in order to be convinced by this stuff.

"Magical globs floating into my skin and aggressively rooting out the dark, evil gunk in my pores? Where do I get in line?"

"The Smurfs like this cereal? How do I get my hands on some?"

Pharmaceutical companies are required to list the dire side effects taking their medication could cause. If there isn't a council in the market that can fine advertisers when their commercials look like scenes out of "The Neverending Story," then consumers should do their part and quit buying their products. Lies should not be rewarded with marketing base.

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UPDATE: It's going to run, but in the A section. I'll have to think up something else for sports.
UPDATE II: Open posting at Mudville and The Indepundit.