What else is she qualified to do?

A monthly talk show.

The young Austrian lady who managed to escape from the windowless basement cell in which she'd been imprisoned for eight years since her abduction at age 10...will premiere on Vienna's Puls4 Sunday night.

I can't decide if this is a triumph of the can-do human spirit or an obscene exploitation of fame.

Young woman held in underground cell gets talk show
[AP / Cnews]

VIENNA, Austria - Television was once her only window on the world. Now Natascha Kampusch - still adjusting to life after spending 8 1/2 years in an underground cell - is starting an improbable new career as a TV talk show host.

Less than two years after staging a dramatic escape while her captor was distracted with a phone call, the young Austrian woman whose ordeal stunned people worldwide is going prime time.

"Natascha Kampusch Meets ...," a chat show featuring local celebrities, debuts Sunday evening on Puls4, a new private cable channel.

A Puls4 trailer shows Kampusch typing on a laptop computer, pouring herself a glass of mineral water and grinning as makeup artists give her a final touchup on the set. She wears her long blond hair down and sports a sweater and a floral-patterned skirt - both in purple, her favorite color.

They're in my other pants

The Book of Biff is chock full of good advice.

You think you're fed up?

You haven't been fed up until you're fed up on live television.

Is This an Ex-Candidate?

Okay, how many ways are there to say "the Clinton campaign is dead" with Monty Python jokes?

Dana Milbank at the Washington Post likes the "dead parrot" sketch.

Customer: "That parrot is definitely deceased, and when I purchased it not half an hour ago, you assured me that its total lack of movement was due to it being tired and shagged out following a prolonged squawk."

Pet-shop owner: "Well, he's, he's, ah, probably pining for the fiords."

He can't spell fjords, but that's okay, who can? And who can resist describing the Clinton campaign as a "prolonged squawk"? (I really like the caption for the accompanying picture of the candidate boarding a plane: "Hillary Clinton, pining for the Rose Garden.")

But as you can see from the cartoon, there are other possibilities. But then you probably read Fark, too.

"But I'm not dead yet!"
"Yes you are. You'll be stone cold dead in a moment."

What I can't figure is why we didn't see this prolonged deathmatch coming. The Democrats are a party of loosely-allied minorities, and here we have two of them set at each other's throats. This could not possibly end well.

"You're black. Republicans will never vote for you."
"You're a woman. Republicans will never vote for you."
"You're too young."
"You're a Clinton."
"I've had the superdelegates locked up from day one."
"Only because they're afraid of your husband."
"Everyone thinks you're a closet Muslim."
"Everyone thinks I'm Tiger Woods."
"Nobody really knows you."
"Everybody knows you, and nobody likes you."

The first candidate to eat a wafer-thin mint will explode. All over the nightly news.

Stuff I Almost Bought

From: T-Shirt Hell

Why not: Well, it's eighteen dollars! That's an awful lot to spend on a tee shirt, especially for a running joke that is about to outrun its sell-by date.

On the other hand, who expected this race to still be undecided by now?

EXTRA: Last week's thing I almost bought:

From: Dirt Cheap Shirt

Why not: Cost wasn't the issue, since it was one of their one-day specials for $1 (plus shipping). Partly it was the fact that it is, after all, a white tee shirt, and people built like me look like slobs wearing white tees. Mostly, though, it's because it's only funny once a year, and it probably wouldn't have arrived by May 5.

But I admit I did laugh out loud when I saw it.