Pinnipeds, Tattoo Removal and Neurofeedback

That's just some of the items funded by more than 8,000 earmarks worth just short of $8 billion in the 2009 Omnibus Appropriations Bill, which President Obama signed on Wednesday.

Pork projects funded in the bill - and you really should listen to "I am the Walrus" by the Beatles while reading this - include $1.5 million for pinniped research at the Alaska Sealife Research Center in Seward, Alaska, and $200,000 for the "Tattoo Removal Violence Prevention Outreach Program" at Providence Holy Cross Foundation in Mission Hills, Calif.

Based on a quick Google search, tattoo removal could become a growth industry in the Mission Hills area, where nine tattoo parlors, including Needle Maniacs Tattoos and Piercings and the Painful Pleasures Tattoo shop, have hung up shingles.

The bill also includes $100,000 allocated to the Inner Harbor for Children and Families in Douglasville, Ga., "to advance neurofeedback treatment to help troubled youth overcome deficits, avoid trouble and become highly functioning members of society."

I don't know about anyone else, but I had little time to become a troubled youth as my parents believed in "chore feedback treatment" - give the kid enough chores and he's too tired to become troubled.

Fittingly, the bill also includes an earmark of $1.8 million for the Agriculture Department's Swine Odor and Manure Management Research Center in Ames, Iowa, whose "multidisciplinary research teams generate and integrate knowledge for evaluation and development of new management practices that minimize nutrient excretion, malodorous emissions, and the release of pathogens into the environment as well as have a positive impact on livestock health."

What a country. I bet Kazakhstan doesn't have a Swine Odor and Manure Management Research Center.

I'm really depressed that I filed my 2008 tax return early.