Subject-verb placement is wrong in that tease. Let's fix it:

At a media event on Thursday, State officials will sign a $1.9 billion contract with Seattle Tunneling Partners to build the deep-bore tunnel.

@1 no, the wording is accurate. The contractor realized they could build it all on Thursday, once the Spanish lead group added Mole Man to their team.

The kook story led me to this gem: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40885541/ns/…

The world's coming to an end on May 21. A fellow figured it out doing "biblical calculations". He's a retired engineer, so that pretty much settles it. There's no possible way he could be nucking futs.

The "phosgene gas" story originates with "Sorcha Faal", a well-known internet hoaxer and end-of-the-world con artist named David Booth.

Are there any protests planned for Thursday's signing?

Nah ha, gus, good one.

Fnarf, after showing the dead bird story to Mr. Canuck, aka the Wildlife Biologist, he said, "Well, they found that the bats that were dying around the wind turbines in southern Alberta weren't hitting the turbines as some had thought, but were actually getting their lungs sucked out by the negative pressure created by the wind speed." Not sure how this relates to the dead blackbirds, but given the nature of their injuries ("massive trauma"), I'm going with sonic boom, or Justin Bieber.

@2 Legion of Imaginary Superheroes ftw!

@5 it's Justin Bieber. Canadian songbirds do stuff like that

Now I'm no phosgene expert, but the article says "Important to note about Iraq’s Phosgene poisonous gas stocks are that they are no longer able to be made by any Western country, including the United States, which makes its value as a Weapon of Mass Destruction (WMD) incalculable," but Wikipedia says "Although less dangerous than many other chemical weapons, such as sarin, phosgene is still regarded as a viable chemical warfare agent because it is so easy to manufacture when compared to the production requirements of more technically advanced chemical weapons," and this site, http://www.sriconsulting.com/CEH/Public/… says, "The United States, Western Europe, and Asia are currently the major producing and consuming regions for phosgene."

Almost makes me wonder if there might be other inaccuracies in that article...

I'm guessing the bird deaths are somehow a result of BP's dispersant fetish.

Also, today is the day they could fix the filibuster. The Senate may actually be able to get things done (now that we've lost the House)! Cross your fingers, folks.

Alex Jones has an "interesting" take on the bird deaths as well. The government's testing secret weapons, dontcha know.

And nothing about Gerry Rafferty dying?

I'll be sending the "EUTIMES" link to older relatives who send me Fox News links.

You DO know that the Village Voice Tom Robbins isn't the "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues" Tom Robbins, right?

Because otherwise your "Even Cowboys Get the Blues" headline for that story would be downright embarrassing for you.

Perhaps the coded message that Tengobaila and her separated-at-birth twin sister, the ex-wife of an astronaut, are trying to send us is how to calculate when exactly the world will end. But the only way to do the calculation is to match the two pieces of a tiny decoder pendant that the Mystery Man hung around their tiny neonate necks before disappearing into a deep tunnel. Just saying. . .

@9
schmader did gerry rafferty on 'line out' yesterday..so here's my favorite rafferty song http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GYMIA1rH…

That song is superfine, riz. Rafferty just couldn't leave the bottle behind. RIP.

The time has come to trust that guiding light
And leavin’ all the rest behind
We’ll take the road that leads down to the waterside
And set out on the journey
Find a ship to take us on the way.

Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right...

P.S. What a sad fact your hubby brought up, Canuck. I've read there are new ways to harvest the wind without displacing lungs and eardrums and such, but GE's just building so damn many of the blade turbines going all over the world right now..

It is sad, gus, also sad that very few of our power sources come without a price tag of some sort. I would think there must be some sort of sound deterrent one could use for the various animals around those turbines? There's so much other large scale raping and pillaging in Alberta, though, that I think most of the NGOs are focused on the environmental side effects of the oil and gas industry here.

@16 If the ratings people find out you announced it publicly, they'll make you give it back. Otherwise you could be bribed by TV executives desperate to make advertisers believe that anyone watches network TV anymore.

@16,
Then I predict a spectacular rise in ratings of shows featuring scantily clad women with impressive guns (both kinds) in the "over 35" demographic.

Bribes are good. So are big guns.

We already know that the Mariners are going to have another difficult year--they simply can't fix all of their problems at once, they won't spend the money to pretend to and the young players that are the hope for the future can't be expected to all have breakout years at the same time.

But hope for the future is what this year is all about--a new manager and letting the young guns play themselves into being major league ready.

So, maybe endless tales reminiscing over Dave Niehaus by a rotating cast of old buddies might NOT be the best way to plan for both the radio and television coverage.

Don't get me wrong. I love Dave Niehaus...but the coverage of this team has ALWAYS been trapped in nostalgia for days (and players) that can't come back.

You have three of the four announcers that Mariners fans are familiar with...if you add a new solid play-by-play guy who is happy to be there rather than bitter about the team not being what it was, you're both keeping the fans comfortable and pointing towards a hopeful future.

Instead, when the team can't pitch their way out of the 7th inning in a meaningless game with the season already lost...we'll be drowning in mawkish nostalgia and endless variations of "you had to be there" stories.

...kind of like last year, only the stories were about Junior.

Good thing we have the Sounders FC.

"The Sounders" or "Sounders FC" are acceptable. "The Sounders FC" is not.

Just for that I'm calling them the Seattle Sounders.

FC stands for Fnarf Complains.

Holy shit, someone get Lindy West in here, Diane Keaton is her long-lost literary twin!