Charting A Course For Laughter!

What could be more fun than charts? Well, yes, the circus--fine. But apart from the circus, there's simply nothing on earth as fun as charts. That is, until NOW...

1. The British are pretty up in arms about the whole Harry-dressing-like-a-Nazi thing, which seems silly, but in all fairness, if I were British, I'd look for any excuse to be outraged by those aristocratic leeches, too. I mean, when was the last time a member of any royal family did something worthwhile? It's been generations--centuries, perhaps. Shouldn't they all have run out of money by now? Well, whatever the case, they still exist, and thus the story about Harry and his swastika armband also exists. Which, in turn, allows for the existence of the news item that relates Harry's punishment coming in the form of having to watch Schindler's List. I thought this was an interesting punishment, so I did some research, and found that the British Royals have for years been using movies to punish their brood. Por ejemplo:

CRIME	PUNISHMENT
Grave robbery	Night of the Living Dead
Burning Atlanta to the ground	Gone with the Wind
Beating up a transvestite	The Crying Game
Publicly questioning the utility of the elderly	Space Cowboys
Drowning babies	Look Who's Talking Too
Attending costume party dressed as Pol Pot	The Killing Fields
Causing house to land on witch	The Wizard of Oz
Becoming werewolf, leading varsity basketball team to state finals	Gandhi

2. Meanwhile, because it's still January, it's not too late for lists of what's in and what's out for 2005, and because it's Martin Luther King Day, it seems appropriate at this time to track the latest trends in racial sterotypes.

RACIAL/ETHNIC GROUP	"OUT" STEREOTYPE	"IN" STEREOTYPE
Italians	Mobsters	Stupid
Jews	Cheap	Annoying
Blacks	Lazy	Dangerous
Arabs	Terrorists	Backwards thugs
Greeks	Homosexuals	Perverts
French	Arrogant	Condescending
Russians	Drunkards	Bipolar
Germans	Efficient	Nazis
Americans	Bullies	Obese
Canadians	Dim-witted	Inferior
Southerners	Inbred	Victims of Incest
Orientals	Short	Inscrutable