Tomorrow President Bush will deliver his 6th state of the union address, and I'm sure it will be a show stopper, if, by show stopper, you mean a tightly bundled pack of lies. Will there be pandering? You bet. Fear mongering? Sure thing. Total misrepresentation of the facts in order to further his party's devious political ends? Count on it.

He has a wide and varied base of angry single issue voters who have yet to get out of him what they feel they deserve, and there is a big election coming up. This will be Bush's opportunity to pull his floundering second term out of its corruption and incompetence induced tailspin.

You see, he has a very interesting trick to pull off. He must both convince people that things are hunky dory in the USA in an effort persuade them that Republicans should still run the show, and at the same time scare the living shit out of everybody, so that they will rely on the GOP to keep up the WAR ON TERROR. Tricky. Plus, while he does all this, he has to try to float some bogus new “BOLD AGENDA FOR AMERICA” so that he still looks strong. Tomorrow will be all about SWAGGER and CONFIDENCE. It should be revolting. Watching it will be like watching professional wrestling. Heavily scripted, loads of posturing, and ultimately meaningless. All bush needs to do is wear a black mask and leotards and he would be the prefect wrestling villain. He could be called, “THE TEXAN”.

I would like to think that I know a little about comedy, at least enough to recognize what is funny and what is not, and I am fairly sure that this is not. Let me set the scene:

Ann Coulter is on this lecture tour that I will for the purposes of this document call, “Hate Across America”, and was speaking to an audience at Philander Smith College, a traditionally black college, when somehow the subject of Justice John Stevens came up. Then, according to Coulter, she told a joke. Here it is:

“We need somebody to put rat poisoning in Justice Stevens' creme brulee.”

OK. So. Just sounds like a run of the mill death threat to me. Really no joke there at all. But I could be wrong. I didn't really think Old School was that funny, so my judgment might be questionable. Lets look at it again:

“We need somebody to put rat poisoning in Justice Stevens' creme brulee.”

Yeah. I'm not seeing it. She took pains to assure the media that she was in fact joking, and not just making a thinly veiled death threat against a sitting supreme court justice. She said, “That's just a joke, for you in the media.”

If you say so. She was, of course, booed. Then later, and I'm not sure if this was a joke or not, she didn't say, but she said the crack cocaine problem, “has pretty much gone away.” She was again booed.

So, am I so out of touch that I don't get this new style of “Death Threat” comedy? Maybe. But, in the interests of staying current, let me take a crack at this new allegedly hilarious, non-irresponsible comedic technique.

“Some enterprising young upstart should blow Ann Coutler's brains out.” Did I do it right? Let me know. I hate to be behind the times.

Well the autopsy is back, and they STILL don't know anything. Some believe the fact that he weighed better than 300 pounds could be a contributing factor, but really, that's a little inconclusive. What about that guy that weighs over 700 lbs. and has to have a construction crew cut a hole in his house every time he needs to go anywhere? He's not dead. The police think they'll know more when the blood toxicology tests come back. I would hope so, since they are baffled right now. 40 years olds don't typically just up and die. There is a reason.

In related news, we at brainpanonline.com would like to proudly admit that we broke the Chris Penn is dead story before almost anyone else, including The New York Times, The Washington Post and the online edition of CNN. We are, as you might expect, making room on our mantelpiece for the all but imminent Pullitzer Prize. F%$# YOU WOODWARD AND BERNSTIEN, WE'RE IN THE BIG LEAGUES NOW!

Right, so, nobody really knows anything. What I told you yesterday is still the totality of what is known publicly on the subject, except for that the body was discovered around 4:00 PM yesterday. Here is an article if you want to read it for yourself:

Actor Chris Penn found dead

We have just learned that Chris Penn has been found dead in a Santa Monica residence. Details are sketchy, but there have been no signs of foul play. A full report tommorrow.

What, you may ask, does Lou Reed think of the new Sienna Miller helmed Edie Sedgwick biopic “Factory Girl”?

“They're all a bunch of whores.”

Harsh you say? Yes well, Lou Reed was there. He can say what ever he wants. The movie, also starring 'Bored Vader' himself Hayden Christensen and the terminally under used Guy Pearce, deals with the doped up life of Andy Warhol muse Edie Sedgwick, and also by way of back drop, will likely feature the goings on of Warhol's art studio, the ultra hip white hot focal point of NYC culture the time, if my pop culture training is to be believed. Lou Reed spent a lot of time around The Factory with his band, The Velvet Underground (played in the movie by Weezer of all bands), knew Edie Sedgwick and has apparently seen a copy of the script.

“I read that script,” Reed said, “it's one of the most disgusting, foul things I've seen — by any illiterate retard — in a long time. There's no limit to how low some people will go to write something to make money.”

By any illiterate retard. Damn. Gotta give it to a man who is not afraid to shit all over a movie that will likely further contribute to his already legendary and God like status. The director, George Hickenlooper, is taking the comments in stride, showing a humor and enthusiasm I don't think I could muster. He said in response,

“I adore Lou Reed. I love him for hating my project, which can only bring it more attention. But nobody is making big money on it. We're all working for scale to tell a complex story about a wonderful young woman. He added, “Lou will be making some money, since we've licensed his song.”

I am looking foreword to the movie, especially now that I know Weezer guitarist Brian Bell will be playing Reed, but you have to give it to Lou. The movie will probably be a highly stylized, very glitzy hollywood version of something that was almost certainly much more expansive and complex than a film will ever be able to show. That's the nature of the movies. Lou's standards are probably really high. He was there. It is must be really hard to read a hollywood script about something that actuality happened to you and be at all happy with it. It must be nearly impossible for him to be objective, so I can see why he's a little cranky.

An actual quote from a speech Bush gave today to Kansas State University students, who bravely fought boredom to go hear the president earnestly deliver another pre-written speech in preparation for his The State Of The Union address:

“You know, it's amazing that people say to me, 'Well, he was just breaking the law.' If I wanted to break the law, why was I briefing Congress?”

Because you are an arrogant asshole, Mr President.

How far can the government take its current demands for blanket access to whatever information it wants, public, private, or otherwise, before people start to get really pissed off. How hard must they push? Warrantless wiretaps. Warrantless access to library recods. Secret courts. Now this:

Google resists US government demand for search data

According to the article, they demanded, nay, subpoenaed, “a list of all terms searched for on the site (Google) between June 1 and July 31 last year, plus a random selection of a million websites contained within Google's index.”

I wonder what real privacy is like?

Even the Pope has this right:

“Intelligent design” not science: Vatican paper

Don't tease:

Americans Support Impeaching Bush for Wiretapping

In this poll, 52% agreed with the statement:

“If President Bush wiretapped American citizens without the approval of a judge, do you agree or disagree that Congress should consider holding him accountable through impeachment.”

43% disagreed, and 6% said they didn't know or declined to answer. The poll has a +/- 2.9% margin of error.

Awesome.