The Daily Muse (FDA-approved for bird cages)

Rewriting history in real time...

Only his hairdresser knows for sure
William Weld

Washington is quite a place, as William Weld found out. A place where there's no such thing as a fair shake or a fair hearing. Especially from the likes of Jesse ("I'm-not- always-this-obdurate") Helms...

But it's not what you think. The former Massachusetts governor who wanted to head South of the Border (presumably to escape those harsh New England winters) fell to the North Carolina senator not for the publicly stated reasons that Weld was soft on drugs or even that he failed to properly smooch Helms' nether regions.
No, we have it on good authority that the real reason Jesse wouldn't let Billy play in the Mexican sandbox had more to do with the color of the nominee's hair than his moderate Republican roots.
"We can't have no reds representin' this country in such a vital postin'," Helms was heard to snort within earshot of our unreliable confidential source.
Fevered negotiations between the White House and Helms involving a last-minute dye job (for Weld) fell through when the two sides failed to agree on a proper hue...

As we were saying
(Before being so
rudely interrupted)
After allowing a week's worth of round-the-clock Diana coverage wash over us, we are now ready to get on with our lives (and yours):

Searching for representation. Having dismissed her dynamic legal duo, Paula ("Thorn in Bubba's Backside") Jones is in dire need of someone--anyone--to help her keep her date in court, where's she's suing the pants off President Bill. Apparently, Mrs. Jones decided a White House check for $700,000 just wasn't enough to make her go far, far away. She also insists on being named to some really, really important post: Clinton's private appointments secretary, perhaps?

Dog gone. (You didn't expect us to leave this subject so soon, did you?) A royal rift between Queen Lizzy and Prince Chuck ("Dont' Call Me Dumbo") over the size of Princess Di's funeral is the latest revelation in this not-so-fairy tale. Charles reportedly was furious at his mom's suggestion that Di deserved even less of a ceremony than one of the queen's beloved corgis. "Just dig a hole out back of the palace and toss the pup in," HRH said.

Al's OK. Al Gore's popularity has suffered little despite questions about his unusual fund-raising techniques (Running naked through the streets after midnight while yelling "Show me the money! Show me the money!"), polls show. Little surprise since Sen. Thompson's hearings into the campaign money mess have shed little light on anything the public remotely cares about: "Now let me get this straight, you never wrote this memo? How about this one? Are you sure?")

Who killed Princess Di?

"I read the news today, oh boy About a lucky man who made the grade And though the news was rather sad Well I just had to laugh I saw the photograph. He blew his mind out in a car He didn't notice that the lights had changed..." --A Day in the Life (Lennon/McCartney)

After all, it was you and me...

As we were saying...
The silence was deafening, so we decided to get back to work and give you a piece of our mind(s)...

Work startage. Why on earth UPS took back all those strikers, we'll never know. They didn't even bother to wear their brown uniforms while people-ing the picket lines (Favorite original slogan: "Send UPS packing")...

Special delivery. President Bill is celebrating his 51st birthday in quiet seclusion on Cape Cod with the remaining Kennedys and a few of his closest lawyers. Word has it he wanted the UPS strike over so his cake could arrive on time...

Now we know. The NTSB has concluded that the ValuJet crash in the Florida Everglades would not have occurred if: fire detectors and automatic extinguishers were aboard, hazardous cargo had been left behind, the cabin phone had worked, the FAA had been more vigilant and the plane had not taken off. Otherwise it was a safe flight...

Cover boy. Time magazine has settled a libel claim with Richard Jewell, the world's most famous security guard. Terms were not disclosed, but the next Man of the Year cover now seems a sure bet...

The oddest things
Since you stumbled upon this page due to a deranged habit or the lack of a coherent Web- surfing strategy, we owe you this much at least:

Parcel peace. President Bill, under increasing pressure to do something, anything to stop the UPS strike, dispatched all-purpose mediator Dennis Ross. Early word from under the table: UPS will stop delivering construction materials to the West Bank if the Teamsters promise to stop putting bodies in the concrete pillars...

Hot draft. In another embarrassing snafu, the president, signing what he thought was a historic first-ever line-item veto, actually accepted a subpoena from Paul Jones' brash lawyers. Clinton, red-faced, later invited reporters to witness a burning of the document and joked he had had "practice" torching important papers in his youth...

Clan bake. John-John, lowering the veil on his famous family's inner workings, describes cousins Joseph and Michael Kennedy as "poster boys for bad behavior." In a joint statement, Massachusetts' best-loved family men, at a loss for anything better to say, replied by calling JFK Jr. "a poster boy for poster boys..."

Apple picking

In the interest of brevity (i.e. time's short, then you die), here are the top 5 reasons Microsoft is taking a $150-million bite of Apple:

Bill needed a simpler, more elegant operating system for Baby Gates' first computer...

Unlike Windows 98, Mac OS 8 is shipping now...

Apple was the only U.S. company Mr. G did not already own...

It's summertime and there's nothing but reruns on TV...

Putting $150 mil on his multi-platinum American Express card gave the Gatester and the Missus enough frequent-flier points for that romantic cross-planet Concorde trip they always dreamed of (if they can only find a baby and mansion sitter)...

Windoze98: Better than our last product, which didn't sell well

Government pork

As we celebrate President Bill's signing of the "historic" balanced-budget deal (with invisible ink no doubt, so he can swear he never did in case things somehow go terribly, terribly wrong), the Washington Post tells us the whole thing almost didn't happen...

It seems negotiations with the Republicans got so intense that at one point, Newt Gingrich was ready to throw it all away...or at least quit his diet.
We can only imagine what that would have been like.
And thank God things worked out after all...

We can
handle it
The UPS strike has got us a bit rattled, what with all the goodies those brown-shirted men deliver in their shiny machines...

The midnight walkout (The central issue: The Teamsters' demand UPS install "real doors" on its delivery trucks) has far-reaching implications for the U.S. economy. Victoria's Secret sales, for example, are said to be sagging...
Other delivery outfits are scrambling to fill the void, but U.S. Postal Service workers (Motto: "Call us crazy and we'll bite your dog") are even more on edge than normal. "That'll be 200 32-cent stamps please..."
FedEx also helped pick up the slack, but many customers were having a tough time cramming their bulky items into those slim overnight envelopes...

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Published periodically since August 31, 1995
� 1997 The Daily Muse