can't wait to see the stats of civil disobedience on THIS one...

Dispatches from the Culture Wars: Adultery = Rape in Michigan?:

A bizarre appeals court ruling here in Michigan:

In a ruling sure to make philandering spouses squirm, Michigan's second-highest court says that anyone involved in an extramarital fling can be prosecuted for first-degree criminal sexual conduct, a felony punishable by up to life in prison.

"We cannot help but question whether the Legislature actually intended the result we reach here today," Judge William Murphy wrote in November for a unanimous Court of Appeals panel, "but we are curtailed by the language of the statute from reaching any other conclusion."

"Technically," he added, "any time a person engages in sexual penetration in an adulterous relationship, he or she is guilty of CSC I," the most serious sexual assault charge in Michigan's criminal code.

It will come as a shock to no one, I imagine, that this ruling was demanded by an attorney general who, himself, is an adulterer:

The ruling is especially awkward for Attorney General Mike Cox, whose office triggered it by successfully appealing a lower court's decision to drop CSC charges against a Charlevoix defendant. In November 2005, Cox confessed to an adulterous relationship.

Last Chance for Beauty and the Beast on Broadway

Little Mermaid flips Beauty off Broadway - Yahoo! News:

With room for only one princess on New York's Broadway, Beauty is to hand over her crown to the mermaid Ariel after 13 years as titleholder.

"Beauty and the Beast," a musical love story between a young girl and a beast who is really a prince, will close on Broadway on July 29 after a 13-year run to make room for a musical version of Disney's animated tale "The Little Mermaid."

Thomas Schumacher, the president of Disney Theatrical, said the decision to close "Beauty" was based on a number of reasons, including the lack of theaters available on Broadway, and a feeling the two shows were too similar to be running together.

"Two fairy tales in the kind of princess-y realm, that's a lot," he told the New York Times.

"Beauty," which opened at the Palace Theater in April 1994, and moved to the smaller Lunt-Fontanne Theater in 1999, is the sixth-longest-running show in Broadway history.

When it closes, the musical will have played on Broadway for almost 5,500 performances.

You've Got a Friend!

The classic routine CUT from the Muppet Show DVD release where this icon came from, has shown up on youtube!  Go enjoy it now before the copyright jerks take it away again...

Personal note: this episode was the inspiration/cause of the first actual nightmare I ever remembered having, around age 7.

new icon

discovered some old photos that hadn't found a home yet...