Anyway, I’m fine, in varying shades of purple. The lesson here is always wear a helmet when bicycling. I was wearing my helmet and if I hadn’t been I might not be typing this right now, and just think how sad you’d be. Also, eff you U.S. health care system ($1,200 for a CAT scan “just to be sure” on the noggin front? Deductible votes no!) and thank heavens I’m a filthy hippie who knows how to take care of myself (ginger for inflammation; arnica for bruising; loads of B vitamins; hatha yoga to prevent stiffness; small quantities of organic beef for iron; an acupuncture session to hit the reset button). Free advice, there you go, no copay necessary.

* * *

I’ve spent a lot of time lying on the couch, giving myself a crash course in American rom-coms. There is no helmet for that, as far as I know, but there should be. It should’ve been called He’s Just Not That Into You Because You Are a Terrible Movie And He Resents Having His Intelligence Insulted For Two Hours, and 27 Dresses Plus a Free Shotgun For Shooting Your Eyes Out Afterwards.

On the other hand, How To Lose Friends and Alienate People was very good, Kirsten Dunst notwithstanding.

It is nice to have an excuse to lie around and watch movies, even if some of the movies make me angry and my DVD player is held together with Scotch tape.

* * *

Comrade Trying to Schedule Plans: So what’s your deal?
MPS: I’m going to raise commodity prices by establishing a system of “domestic allotments” that will create artificial scarcity conditions
MPS: OH WAIT NO that was FDR’s deal

Gchat: How to lose friends and alienate people.

* * *

Current obsession: traffic islands.

* * *

Fetal joke: Something about the Senate voting down ACORN funding on account of the prostitution video thing and the Senate’s continued funding, via payroll, of David Vitter. (Joke never carried to term. It will not be missed.)

* * *

So what do you think? Brain damage, yes/no?

In case you couldn’t stomach it yourself, the Palin tribute shows a clip from her Jan. 19, 2009 appearance on Beck’s inaugural Fox News show:

BECK: I think the problem with most politicians is they haven’t been at a Wendy’s drive-through in quite some time. You know what I mean? They’ve never actually said, “Yeah, just give me a Frosty, please, with the Oreos crunched up inside.” I think that’s a problem. I’m gonna ask politicians, “When was the last time, Governor, that you were at a Wendy’s and had a Frosty? And you ordered it yourself.”

Now flash back to the December 10, 2008 episode of Beck’s radio show, in which he described his speaking tour in Idaho:

BECK: The only problem with it was, I’m sorry, Idaho, but you have far too many signs that say “Next exit, 47 miles.” And when you are at least 47 miles away and you can’t trust that that exit has some sort of dispenser that could give you a Frosty, I just don’t know. You know what I’m saying?

Some guy named STU: It’s very, very understandable, Glenn, when you are away from Wendy and her services. I know you get very disappointed.

Mind you, this was just one month after Beck suffered a horrific assault at a Wendy’s where he was “going to get Frosties” because “everyone wants a Frosty.” You’d think the trauma of being verbally attacked by a racist Nazi truck driver might sour a man on this particular brand of frozen corn syrup, whey, and cellulose gum, but apparently not.

I can’t find any mention of an official deal between Wendy’s and Beck, but it seems to me a savvy fast-food exec might start thinking up ways to monetize this shillfest — also too, I hear Glenn could use a side of sponsorships with his Frosty these days. (They are delicious if you dip them.)

Hark, a seagull. Or a rat in a seagull costume.

Fun fact: In olden times, banner ads were made out of bricks.

The city of Belfast has strong feelings re: literature, and is not afraid to say so via magnetic poetry on a sidewalk board.

The city of Belfast is also rich in history. Exhibit A:

Exhibit B:

Watch the Frederick Wiseman documentary, if you are interested in a more recent perspective.

Fun fact: Putting elephants atop cinemas is a festive Maine tradition. We switched from gazelles in the mid-1940s.

Here are some guys in makeshift kilts launching a rowboat. Another festive tradition.

Here is why I turn up my nose, literally and metaphorically, at roses from florists.

Maine is not really all that great. The black flies are terrible. The mosquitoes are worse. We got eight feet of snow last winter. I saw a pothole the size of my car just the other day. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s nice for a visit, but you don’t want to leave the city and move here.

Also the natives are shifty.

I did not click any further, for fear of rending the space-time continuum.

Speaking of which, have you noticed what happens if you visit PalinBachmann2012.com?

Via the local paper, obvs.

You’re welcome…

A United Nations document on “climate change” that will be distributed to a major environmental conclave next week envisions a huge reordering of the world economy, likely involving trillions of dollars in wealth transfer, millions of job losses and gains, new taxes, industrial relocations, new tariffs and subsidies, and complicated payments for greenhouse gas abatement schemes and carbon taxes — all under the supervision of the world body.

Look at that, treehuggers want to redistribute the wealth! Hey, who put conservative peanut butter in my right-wing chocolate? (Also, the illegals and the gays are probably involved, somehow.)

Those and other results are blandly discussed in a discretely worded United Nations “information note” on potential consequences of the measures that industrialized countries will likely have to take to implement the Copenhagen Accord, the successor to the Kyoto Treaty, after it is negotiated and signed by December 2009.

The results are blandly discussed, because the United Nations does the Socialist bidding of President Obama, the most boring man on earth. And this “information note” is “discretely” worded because, um, words in sentences often have spaces between them? Whatever, patriots don’t need grammar.

In the stultifying language that is normal for important U.N. conclaves, the negotiators are known as the “Ad Hoc Working Group On Further Commitments For Annex I Parties Under the Kyoto Protocol.” Yet the consequences of their negotiations, if enacted, would be nothing short of world-changing.

They tried to slip that by us, those sneaks, hiding the potential global impact of their actions behind misleading non-global phrases like “United Nations” and “Kyoto protocol.”

In the same bland manner, the note informs negotiators without going into details that cap-and-trade schemes “may induce some industrial relocation” to “less regulated host countries.” Cap-and-trade functions by creating decreasing numbers of pollution-emission permits to be traded by industrial users, and thus pay more for each unit of carbon-based pollution, a market-driven system that aims to drive manufacturers toward less polluting technologies. [...]

Another form of “adjustment” would require exporters to “buy [carbon] offsets at the border equal to that which the producer would have been forced to purchase had the good been produced domestically.”

Kind of like how all those financial services firms relocated to the Cayman Islands, at least on paper! I mean, Huh? I don’t know anything about that.

The impact of both schemes, the note says, “would be functionally equivalent to an increased tariff: decreased market share for covered foreign producers.” (There is no definition in the report of who, exactly, is “foreign.”)

ILLEGALS. (Gays?)

Indeed, only rarely does the “information note” attempt to inform readers in dollar terms of the impact of “spillover effects” from the potential policy changes it discusses. In a brief mention of consumer subsidies for fossil fuels, the note remarks that such subsidies in advanced economies exceed $60 billion a year, while they exceed $90 billion a year in developing economies.”

Why won’t you give us simple, specific dollar amounts for all the hypothetical situations that might arise from potential policies that may or may not affect multiple countries’ economies now and in the future? Yes or no? In the Constitution, what provision can you point to?

Much depends, of course, on the extent to which harsher or more lenient greenhouse gas reduction targets demand more or less drastic policies for their achievement.

And, precisely because the [upcoming] Bonn meeting is a stage for negotiating those targets, the note is silent. Instead it suggests that more bureaucratic work is needed “to deepen the understanding of the full nature and scale of such impacts.”

This is a terrible excuse to create bigger government, when all we need is for Joe the Plumber go to stand in a field, “on assignment,” and tell us what is happening to the environment. It will take him like forty seconds.

In an influential but highly controversial paper called “Key Elements of a Global Deal on Climate Change,” British economist Nicholas Lord Stern, formerly a high British Treasury official, has declared that industrial economies would need to cut their per capita carbon dioxide emissions by “at least 80% by 2050,” while the biggest economies, like the U.S.’s, would have to make cuts of 90 percent.

Stern also calls for “immediate and binding” reduction targets for developed nations of 20 percent to 40 percent by 2020.

To meet Stern’s 2050 goals, he says, among other things, “most of the world’s electricity production will need to have been decarbonized.”

EVERYBODY GO OUT AND BURN A PILE OF FOSSIL FUELS, RIGHT NOW. DO NOT LET THIS LIMEY PUSH YOU AROUND. Look, “Lord” Stern, remember 1776? Yeah, we won. You’re not the boss of anything any more, except maybe Canada. The solution to all this, obviously, is more tea parties. Tea parties are always the solution.

Let us start by dumping coal in the East River, right in front of those hacks at the United Nations, and the illegals/gays of New York City, not to mention the liberal media elites, who can be dunked in a large tank if someone is willing to build one.

Or, This is how you know today was the day you got laid off from the blog you love writing for, and also your other job is ending in three weeks, and your other editor hasn’t sent you any work since February.

Way to go, today.