Well, I blame my bloggin’ absence on the frantic preparations for this Friday’s Secret Circus. If you’re in Boulder, get to CU’s Old Main at 8 p.m. on Friday for the best free comedy show in the world. Juice and cookies provided. Keep your eyes on this site for a sneak preview of one of our brand-new videos. On to the regularly-scheduled post (from a few days ago).

Every Sunday morning (or late Saturday night) I hope to provide you with a couple of links to some leisurely and interesting reading, typically on the topics of comedy and politics, which is where this blog seems to be going. This week’s Sunday morning reading comes on a Tuesday. How do you like that? Links below the fold.

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Less than a year after telling America “I’m the decider,” President Bush has changed his position. Today, he told the press, “I’m the decision-maker.”

Well, Mr. President, which is it?

More later, but for now, how ’bout you read this post on the term “flip-flop” from Dilbert scribe Scott Adams? It’s something a lot of us have been saying for a while, but somehow it has more credibility coming from the man who gave us Dilbert, Dogbert and, yes, Catbert.

Priorities are the worst

Note: Usually, I’ll post a couple of sentences from my weekly column and link over. This time, for whatever reason, the column didn’t make it in its entirety to the Daily Camera’s Web site. So today’s full column will be available here until such time that the Camera gets it fully posted:

My little yellow canaries are wobbling on their perches. They’re drunk with methane poisoning and they’re losing their balance and they’re dying. Read the rest of this entry »

WASHINGTON — After delivering the State of the Union address, President George W. Bush returned to the Oval Office to find a mysterious note on the Resolute desk. The note read “Mural Room. 3:00,” but lacked any information on the meeting’s topic. Bush wondered if it could have been about something in his speech — the troop escalation in Iraq, his health plan or perhaps even that little bone he threw to the environmental wackos who point to all this “evidence” that the planet is getting hotter, the part where he said the U.S. should cut gas usage by 20 percent in 10 years.

Before Bush could ask an aide to elaborate, Vice President Dick Cheney appeared in the doorway.

“Twenty percent in 10 years huh, pal?” said the vice president whose fortunes depend on the energy industry, smacking one fist into an open palm. “Yeah, I’ll show you 20 percent. Mural room. Be there. Don’t be a pussy.”

I don’t know if you’ve been following the “Big Brother” flap across the pond, so here’s a quick recap:

“Big Brother” is a wildly popular reality show in the UK (and damn near everywhere else) in which several strangers live in a house together under constant surveillance. What separates it from the other 800 shows that fit that description? Nothing worth mentioning, which means it’s built on a precarious balance of the following:

1. Profitable (good-looking) idiots
2. Competitions designed to help the audience pick favorites
3. The hatred that everyone has for his fellow man
4. Voting to eliminate certain participants
5. Boobs (which separate reality television from politics, except in California)

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CHICAGO — A Chicago couple gained notoriety this week for having induced labor early in order to ensure they’d be free to watch the Chicago Bears play the New Orleans Saints in last night’s NFC Championship game. Here are some other couples who got their 15 minutes of fame in similar ways:

2000 - Steve and Alisha Jackson, who induced early so they could have a milennium baby and instead got never-ending arguments about when the milennium really began.

1986 - Pat and Maggie Dolan, the Boston couple that induced early in order to watch the Boston Red Sox and New York Mets play the ‘86 World Series and could never look their son in the face without seeing Bill Buckner.

1937 - Aloisius and Madeline White, the New Jersey couple that induced early in order to watch the Hindenburg crash.

So the Super Bowl is set. It’ll be the Chicago Bears and the Indianapolis Colts, which is significant for a few reasons, but we’ll let the real media cover that.

On the jokes front, I just thought it’d be nice to take a look back at where we were just a year ago, getting geared up for Super Bowl XL between the Seattle Seahawks and the eventual champions, the Pittburgh Steelers.

Hillary Clinton got our attention by posting a video on her Web site. Today, her campaign posted a press release on her site titled “24 Hours Later, the Reviews Are In.” Then they’ve got blurbs from all of these media outlets, just like the quotes used on movie trailers:

Top pundits on Hillary’s announcement: ‘brilliant,’ ‘bold,’ ‘I’m blown away’ … Clinton announcement hailed in blogs as ‘handled perfectly,’ ‘profoundly moving,’ ‘news of a generation’

It’s kind of adorable how excited these candidates are about this new technology. I wouldn’t be surprised if a candidate announced his or her intentions by going on Oprah, bringing a laptop, logging on to YouTube and playing a video of him or herself in the model of the Obama and Clinton videos and asking the camera operators to just zoom in on the laptop.

That would be fun, but do we really have to get the movie critics in on it? Has there ever been a movie they didn’t rave about?

Let’s go ahead and assume that it is going to get worse and predict what they’ll say about the gripping candidacy-announcing Web video of Sam Brownback (obviously by taking what they’ve said about “Apocalypto” and placing it in the context of the Kansas senator):

“…a non-stop thrill ride that occasionally hits a philosophical speed bump here and there.”

“…has a bright future making illegal snuff films. That’s not a compliment.”

“…it seems like something made by a crazy person.”

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his political allies announced on Sunday the end of a two-month boycott on Iraqi politics. Al-Sadr, Iraq’s parliamentary speaker, made the announcement in front of a large banner reading “Mission Accomplished” after other members of the country’s parliament agreed to consider the al-Sadr bloc’s political demands.

The cleric “found the banner on eBay,” according to an aide speaking on condition of anonymity. “It was so cheap we couldn’t pass it up. I mean we would have paid more for it, but whoever owned it really wanted to get rid of it, I guess. What we’ve accomplished here isn’t exactly, totally done, but Mr. al-Sadr was so excited about the banner he just had us put it up anyway.”

The banner was not made available for comment.

WASHINGTON — Today, Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) announced her intention to make former Gov. Tom Vilsack of Iowa, Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) and former Sen. Mike Gravel of Alaska completely irrelevant.

“I’m in,” declared Clinton’s Web site, “And I’m in to trivialize Dennis Kucinich to the point that his Wikipedia entry is actually, wholly deleted. Again.”