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I was driving my kids to the hospital to see their newborn brother. My seven-year-old son asked me, “Dad, where is the parking?”

I replied, “The parking is at the end of the driving.”

Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb missed practice today due to inflammation of his right ankle and right thumb as well as atrophy of his Trade Value. McNabb is focusing on rehabilitating his shrinking Trade Value by resting and playing only against teams with weak defenses. “Look, you get two interceptions in a game and the owners in Chicago and Minnesota starting having second thoughts,” McNabb said. “I need to walk that fine line between playing enough to keep my numbers up and keeping my injuries and interceptions down. Minor injuries that swell up and down at conveniently random intervals allow me to optimally regulate my Trade Value.”

Head Coach/Vice President of Football Operations/Minister of Information Andy Reid cited remarkably similar sentiments about McNabb’s injury status. Reid told reporters at his Wednesday news conference, “Look (throat-clearing), uh, we could just release Donovan (throat-clearing), uh, at the end of the season and let him sign wherever he (throat-clearing), uh, wants, but why not keep him healthy and get some value (throat-clearing), uh,  for him? It would be a good (throat-clearing), uh, opportunity for us to ignore our weakness at the (throat-clearing), uh, linebacker position. If a guy goes out and throws four touchdown passes, then the other owners (throat-clearing), uh, will sit up and pay attention and maybe (throat-clearing), uh, pick up that $100 million contract and we’ll get an extra draft pick to screw up (throat-clearing)(another throat-clearing). When Donovan hits the two-interception mark, it’s like when they stop trading on the New York Stock Exchange to (throat-clearing), uh, avoid a crash. We’re getting him out of the game in a way that minimizes the damage to his Trade Value. The nice thing about having two different minor injuries is that you can pick either one and you can switch from one day to the next. I just wish Donovan would study the media spin playbook a little more. I told him ‘Tuesday it’s the thumb, Wednesday it’s the ankle’, but he got it mixed up. That’s what he gets for hiring that PR guy that we canned last spring. Time’s yours.”

Birdseed: Reid’s royalty deal with Pro Sound Effects pays him the SAG minimum for each high-fidelity, “right-into-the-microphone” throat-clearing, also known as his exolabiodental fricative clause. Actually, I just wanted an excuse to write “exolabiodental fricative.”

Really great 24 x 7 6.5 x 5 service from Verizon. I don’t go looking for this stuff. I was trying to resolve a problem I had with Verizon where they kept billing me for DSL for months after I switched to Speakeasy.

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They shut down their web sites for the weekend and fly to tropical resorts in their private jets.

There is a billboard that I see every time I exit the Schuylkill Expressway in Philadelphia. Thousands of people each day see this billboard next to 30th Street Station at exit 344, which says,

“Me, my doctor, and Aetna. Together we’re making history.”

They’re also making Strunk and White roll in their graves.

I am reminded on a daily basis that journalism is dead. Sure news stories are being reported, but more and more, the reporters are zombies who cannot distinguish reality from fiction. Just today on CNN, Jeanne Moos filed a “fluff” piece on recently divorced French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s trip to the United States. Moos quips, “The last time there was a bachelor President in the White House was probably when Michael Douglas wooed Annette Benning in The American President.”

Uh…hold on a second. The American President is a movie, right? It’s fiction. Michael Douglas is an actor and I bet not one frame of that film was shot in the White House. So, Michael Douglas was not a bachelor President. He was playing a bachelor President in a fictional movie. When I was watching I was sure she was going to say James Buchanan, who was the last (and only) bachelor to be President of the United States. I can’t believe there is an editor, even an editor of the “humorous” and “offbeat” pieces that would let that quote pass. Oh, but the distributor of The American President is Castle Rock Entertainment, a company that is owned by Time Warner, the same company that owns CNN. Now I see. It’s not only bogus reporting, it’s Time Warner’s version of cross-selling. Excuse me while I drape the black cloth over my picture of Edward R. Murrow and go puke.

Ah, now that feels better. I shouldn’t be surprised, really. These are the same fools who believed and reiterated all the lies about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction (and how about those great ratings they got in the early days of the war).

KYW “News” Radio 1060 AM is the #1 rated radio station in the Philadelphia market. Every day, they run “business reports” by the very people whom their journalists are supposed to be covering. Fred Sherman of Royal Bank and Susan Springsteen of Morgan Stanley, people who have a vested interest in the state of the financial markets, report to us about the state of the financial markets. They even have web pages on KYW’s web site. It’s like they’re bragging that they have no journalistic standards. They need to take the word “News” out of “KYW News Radio”. How can that be considered journalism? Would it have been OK if Jeffrey Skilling was given space on the front page of the New York Times to report about how Enron was doing? KYW also has the news anchor people reading ads during their own shows. I’m sure some people are confused about what is editorial content and what is advertising. So much for the Chinese wall.

Ticketmaster today announced new charges that it will be adding to its current “convenience charges” and “processing fees” to boost revenue for the company. Ticketmaster Vice President for Shellacking Benjamin Dover said, “We are constantly amazed at how willing our customers are to pay even the most nonsensical fees that are tacked on to the ticket price. We figured we would just keep adding them until there was some type of resistance, but so far we haven’t seen any.” Here is the list of new Ticketmaster fees and charges:

• Because it is [insert day of week] charge, that’s our favorite day of the week: $2.50
• Oxygen fee: $1.00
• Upholstery maintenance charge: $5.50
• Inconvenience charge (to balance the convenience charge) : 20% of ticket price
• “You should be lucky we even let you through the door” fee: $4.00
• “…and the horse you rode in on” charge: $18.00
• “You’ll have to get a job as an evening greeter at Wal-Mart just to pay the interest” fee: $27.00
• “Invisible force field that prevents hot liquid molten rock or comet dust from showering down on your head during the show” charge: $14.00
• Abraham Lincoln fee: $5.01
• Gravity insurance charge: $1.50
• pre-processing fee: $8.00
• post-processing fee: $12.00
• talent surcharge (pays the actual performers):$0.02