The Lint Screen

Author: PD Scullin

  • Dead Rich Distant Relative Like Winning Lottery

    Cry not, sweet tombstone angel–– soon we’ll be rich!
    One of the things I love about this digital world is the ability to connect to people. It’s both remarkable and can be quite profitable.

    Case in point: a recent dispatch I received from a good man named ‘Rene Keita.’ I’m not sure where this person is from, but he is a kind, caring, compassionate soul who only wants to assist me in finding wealth as a result of the tragic passing of a distant relative I never knew I had!

    Read his urgent message to me below and you’ll see my good fortune!

    Dear Patrick Scullin,
    I am Personal lawyer to Engr.M.J. Scullin , who died in an auto accident along side with his family. After all investigation even with the relevant embassy has yielded no results showing that there is no living next of kin.
    I hereby solicit for your immediate response and positive committed efforts to facilitate the fund remittal of total sum $31 million USD before it get confiscated by the bank. This fund was left behind with a bank by my late client.I have all the necessary proof
    Upon your positive response to this covenant, I will make all necessary information known to you. please get in touch with me through my email at ( rene.keita@hotmail.fr ) for more details.
    Yours
    Rene Keita

    I am in for a cool $31 million clamollas, and I didn’t even have to scratch a lottery ticket to win! One Scullin gets planted in the earth, the other plucks the monetary fruits of his life’s labor. What could be easier?

    I’ve dispatched all my personal information to Rene Keita and imagine I’ll soon be hob-nobbing amongst the swells (“Hello, Mick Jagger, do you know my friends, Alan Thicke, Doug Henning, Lorraine Bracco and Richard Belzer?”) I’ll be a fabulously wealthy fat cat, thanks to the untimely death of a dearly departed relative I never knew but feel eternally grateful to.

    It’s this kind of connectivity that I believe will make this internet thing go from being a fad to a real sensation and perhaps a permanent useful tool.

    Has the internet changed your life for the better? Please share.

  • 12 WikiLeaks Blockbusters

    Someone vigorously denies always leaving the toilet seat up.
    Discerning newshounds do not wish to wade through the morass of the 250,000 leaked diplomatic cables posted recently by WikiLeaks, so the staff of The Lint Screen have selected the following choice morsels for your enlightenment and amazement.

    1. Russian prime minister, Vladimir Putin is reported to frequently brush his teeth without first flossing. “It is an absolutely outrageous allegation,” says a source close to the Ruskie leader. “Mr. Putin always has minty-fresh breath and almost no tartar or plaque build-up. Obviously his dental hygiene is second to none!”
    2. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki leaves the seat up.
    3. Hillary Clinton thinks the best way to persuade Egyptian leaders is by using a stage whisper, winking and making occasional wild bird sounds.
    4. The secret handshake of Hamas involves elbows, ear wriggling and yogurt.
    5. Russia’s president, Dmitry Medvedev is allegedly afraid of moths and saber-toothed tigers.
    6. China isn’t buying “the check’s in the mail” explanation for the payback of U.S. debt. Officials say the government will soon try a new tact: “We’re going to claim that we’ve run out of checks and are waiting for new ones to arrive.”
    7. French president Nicolas Sarkozy reportedly is a bad french kisser. “He spits like a camel sucking on a lemon.”
    8. The spat between Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Saudi’s King Abdullah began years ago when the Iranian leader lent the King his CD of Led Zeppelin’s Houses of The Holy and it came back “looking like a cat used it as a scratching post.”
    9. Pakistan’s president Asif Ali Zardari rarely eats salads or collects Mardi Gras masks.
    10. The Afghan Taliban’s hygiene is not as good as one might think.
    11. The U.S. cables were downloaded when an security insider hacked into the top secret government security system by correctly guessing the password “1234.”
    12. WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, is a bedwetter, according to angry government security figures.

  • Bristol & The Situation Cause End of Civilization

    What do you get when you cross The Situation with Bristol Palin?

    Absolutely nothing!

    The two pop culture icons appear together in a compellingly persuasive new PSA all about safe sex that has proven so effective, people no longer feel the need to have sex.

    Population experts fear the human race may soon become extinct as a result.

  • Pity Morley Safer

    Imagine you’ve spent a distinguished career as a respected journalist, and you finally get a shot to appear in a feature film alongside Bob Schieffer and Chris Matthews and HARRISON FORD!

    You’d be thinking, I’m golden, I got me some cinematic gold dust to sprinkle on my career.

    Unfortunately, the movie is a miserable mess called Morning Glory, the dreaded romantic comedy that has neither believable romance or laughable comedy. Yes, it’s that catnip called a date movie that every male attends knowing in the back of his mind that it will be disappointing, but holding optimistic hope that he may be fooled.

    No such luck here. This sucker never gets airborne.

    The plot is this: a perky producer played by Rachel McAdams is fired from her job working for a morning show in New Jersey. She’s down, she’s out, even her mom loses faith in her dream. Wah wah wahhhhhh.

    But you can’t keep a dreamer down. No, she gets an interview with the lowest ranked morning show on a national network– staffed with a dysfunctional crew and egomaniacal anchors, including an ex-Miss Arizona beauty queen played by Diane Keaton. Rachel gets hired as executive producer by boss man Jeff Goldblum. Hooray for the goodness and dreaming!

    The perky producer begins shaking things up. She fires one anchor (leaving Diane Keaton in her role) and hires a new anchor, a curmudgeonly legendary newsman who has a network contract that says he HAS to take any job offered. This guy is played by a sleepwalking Harrison Ford.

    Now imagine what sort of wacky hijinks might ensue with a lightweight female anchor (Keaton) and a heavyweight newsman anchor (Ford) who despise each other. I guarantee anything you imagined is better and funnier than what writer Aline Brosh McKenna imagined in her screenplay.

    The entire film is plodding, poorly directed and paced by Roger Michell, and ultimately as satisfying as having a popcorn kernel wedged between two teeth. I had that dreaded condition during my screening and it did distract me a bit from the pain of viewing this hateful little film.

    The scene with Morley, Bob, Chris and Harrison is one in which the pompous newsman is on a bender and out with his newsmen pals, and his perky producer comes to make him behave.

    A pity Morley Safer had to be a part of such an embarrassing mess. He may want to go to a war zone to make himself feel better and atone for appearing in Morning Glory.

    As for you, considered yourself fairly warned.

  • Outrage Over New TSA “Extra Security Candid Photos”

    The American air-traveling public was upset enough over enhanced TSA pat-down checks and body scans, but now its ire is on full boil with new ‘extra security candid photos’ being enacted in airports nationwide.

    Select travelers are taken into a private security areas where they are asked to disrobe, and in some cases wear revealing costumes, so that they can be photographed by TSA shutterbugs.

    “I can’t believe what they did,” said Mandy Ginhuttin, a 28-year old mechanical engineer who was recently subjected to the new enhanced security check at Hartsfield-Jackson Airport in Atlanta.

    “The TSA guard escorted me to an area that was about the size of a department store dressing room. I was instructed to disrobe and change into a revealing teddy outfit, from Victoria’s Secret, I think. I asked why, and they said it was a top secret security procedure. I did what they said, I was terrified. Then, some sleazy photographer came in and took a couple dozen pictures. He was saying rude things like, ‘Oh yeah, baby, that’s it– make love to the lens, that’s the stuff. Yeah, baby– I’m going to make you a star, sugar, a TSA star!’ After about ten minutes of posing, he told me I did great and I was cleared, I could get clothed and catch my flight. He said I might receive a follow-up call to take part in a video security project he was doing. He said that the film was being shot in some motel close to the airport. Frankly, it all seems pretty sleazy, not to mention suspicious.”

    Another woman, Juanita Vesquez, reported she was asked to don a tight-fitting nurse’s uniform for her photo session. “They told me that apparently a lot of terrorists were dressing in costumes and uniforms and that with my cooperation, they could build some sort of database. It didn’t make much sense to me, but they said I had to either do that or be subjected to an oil rub-down private security check with Yanni music playing in the background. That really creeped me out, so I decided to do the dress-up thing. I had a choice to wear either a nurse uniform, a Catholic school girl outfit or a cheerleader get-up. I think the whole thing was shady, and an incredible invasion of my privacy!”

    When asked about the new security procedure, TSA employees were mum but offered to give this reporter a pat-down with iron pipes if he didn’t move his big mouth along quickly.

  • Obama Considers Buying Ranch

    Obama may soon be growing brush to clear some brush.
    In an attempt to bolster his sagging approval ratings, President Barack Obama is reportedly giving serious consideration to buying a ranch.

    An anonymous source in Obama’s secret inner circle called “The Whispering Shadows of Secrecy And Skullduggery” said the story is absolutely true during a clandestine meeting with this journalist at a popular Washington, D.C. restaurant.

    “Obama’s been in Washington a couple years now,” said the source, “and he just can’t crack that darn bipartisan political nut. I mean, the democrats got hammered in the last elections. We need a huge ‘Hail Mary’ play, and the President thinks he’s got one.”

    The source quickly darted his eyes around the restaurant nervously, then hurridly applied gum spirits and a fake Van dyke beard to his face. He spoke in angel kiss-soft hushed whisper.

    Reagan puts in a good day’s work.

    “The President is an astute student of history and he’s been studying common traits of popular presidents of recent times. He believes he’s cracked the code for gaining favor with the American public: brush clearing.”

    The antsy man quickly reached into his suit jacket pocket and put on a pair of dark granny sunglasses. He continued his whispering but affected a Romanian accent.

    “Look, Ronald Reagan was an actor before he got into politics, right? So he naturally understood the importance of set design, wardrobe, props– the whole enchilada. What’s he do when approval ratings sag? He spends some time on a ranch clearing brush and voila, his popularity skyrockets! Genius, sheer genius!”

    The nervous source quickly donned an orange leather fedora hat with a long peacock feather propped out of the brim, darted his eyes about the room and continued in a whisper.

    W. knew the importance of clearing brush.
    “Now fast forward to George W. Bush’s two-term presidency. W. had his ranch near Crawford, Texas. He made 77 trips there over his eight years as president and spent all or part of 490 days there. That’s a lot of brush clearing, but he did it gladly to get out of the Washington bubble. Obama’s finally getting the message: the public likes a president who can clear him some brush!”

    The unnamed source quickly dove beneath the table and continued. “Once Obama gets his ranch, raises some brush and then clears same brush, well, look out. He’ll be a lock for a second term.”

    With that, the Washington insider began crawling in a serpentine pattern across the restaurant floor toward the door and vanished into the street, sticking this reporter with the check.

    Washington insiders definitely know how to play hardball.