Too Much To Dream

Site stuff

If the blog looks funny today, it's because I am attempting to set it up to be skinnable. So far I haven't had much luck. I am trying to do it with php, but I'm pretty new to that stuff. Also, I have come down with a bout of stomach thing, so I'm going to miss yet another class. I can't seem to shake the disease, man.

Also: I have nixed the idea of enabling comment smiley images, because I remembered I have disabled images in the comments with a script. (That was because some nolifeshitbucket left uglyporn jpegs in my comments one day.) So no smileys for now. I'm sure you can live with that.

Update: guhhh... forget it for now. I can't stand the slow load times on my computer. Waiting for the screen to sloooowly redraw, hearing my elderly hard drive go ek-ek-ek-ek-ek... it just isn't worth it. Also, I am not feeling particularly well. The new machine is coming in sometime next week; I'll get back to extensive site management then.

Ego party for one

The Agonist is better than you, and you, and you. He is also "thoughtful, global, and timely." Well, I'm thoughtless, square, and timeless, so we complement each other.

Update: Alex Knapp says it better.

Second Update: Dean Esmay provides this counter essay by Gary Utter.

Can you dig it, Phil?

Phil Donohue, Republican-maker. CPO Sparkey reacts to this "I heart Phil Donohue" tongue bath. Read it too, and feel the smarm!

Sometimes you just gotta come clean...

... and admit a few things to yourself. And the world. I -- I --

I want to live in Frank's world.

Yes! Yessss! I admit it! I want to live in Frank's world! It's true! The truth shall set you free! Bwahaahaahahaahahaaa!!!

(Come on, admit it. You all want to live in his world too!)

Oh, you went there

It's time to tell someone to "step back and talk to the hand" (warning, cursing and swearing ahead):

OK, look, Karen: 1) if you had a problem with Tex's swearing at you, you should have emailed him. He has email. Look on his site. BUT -- you came to MY blog and shat all over it. Hey, we made fun of you, but that's the risk you take when you publish the 5, 679th list of unoriginal, hackneyed, TIRED ASSERTIONS about the US that I have read since approximately 9:45am 11 September 2001. It's the same fucking shit everybody else in the America Sux crowd has been saying over and over, the same boring tune, and I'm sick of it, and I'm not going to stop saying so.

2) as far as I am concerned, neither I nor any other American owes you JACK SHIT. I don't have to be "polite" to you, not after the shitty things you wrote for an online publication about MY country, totally without any provocation whatsoever except that you are a little busybody who thinks your opinions are more important than anyone else's. Get this straight, chippy: the only reason you are free to "bravely" run about nude and pretend to be concerned about the the Oppressed™ is because people you probably would spit upon have been there to do the dirty work of protecting you from your country's enemies with weapons and warfare, and a lot of those have been Americans. Look it the fuck up.

And 3) please spare me the crocodile tears about the Evil Bush Cadre and his administration's supposed trampling of our civil rights here in the US. You don't give a shit about the civil rights situation in the US or any other country; on the contrary, you are filled with glee at every setback we suffer, and you and your ilk would rather see every cute child in the Third World™ be eaten by army ants than be helped by Americans. Besides, people like you can't wait to lock up everyone who doesn't think in lockstep with you in a gulag where they'll all be forced to look at you naked and read your childish scribblings. Which, let me reiterate, were not posted on a personal blog but on a professional publication, perhaps even for pay, and I am damned sure that it didn't go up without seeing an editor first. The hell you just spontaneously came up with your little list; don't even try to fuck with me on that. As for me, no one pays me to put this site up: I pay for every byte of it. I don't have to allow your diatribes onto my blog; I could delete every single word you have posted here and you would have no right to complain any more than you would if I threw you out of my house if you started pissing in the corner of the living room. I allow you to comment here solely out of my charity, and that charity is entirely arbitrary and can be withdrawn at any time. On the other hand, things posted on a newspaper (or its website) are fair fucking game. If you didn't want to get a negative reaction then maybe you should have thought a bit before you sent your copy in. Welcome to the real world, baby. No editors will hold your hand here.

Gratuitous Hobbit post

In honor of all those bloggers who post whatever the hell they want, I bring to you this little image of Frodo and Sam for no reason whatsoever. Because it occurred to me that I haven't blogged about LOTR lately. Apparently there are some people out there who who object to people posting about whatever they want on their very own blogs. Apparently there are some people out there with no lives.

Naked Aussie skank update

Now who is this really? These bon mots were left in the comments section of that post. Here are the comments complete with traceroute and whois info (update -- I moved the rest of this into the extended entry listing for aesthetic reasons):

Name: Karen Jackson Email Address: grandmascrotum@yahoo.com.au URL: http://www.streakerama.com

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IP Address: 202.43.1.208
TraceRoute: http://www.opus1.com/htbin/traceroute?debug=NO&query=202.43.1.208
WhoIs: http://ws.arin.net/cgi-bin/whois.pl?queryinput=202.43.1.208

Hi y'all.
Nice to see my little angry webdiary post has pissed so many people off - and got you to think a bit about your country, and how others see it.

Yes, I was angry when I wrote "Ten reasons to be anti-American" and I got a little extreme in my comments. I'm just sick of the term being used to deride others who dare to question the way the world is.

I still think they cover the basics of why the rest of the world doesn't trust the American government. Is it so important that I said "dozens"?

And I like squirrels - so??? They're funny. They've got bushy tails. And the grand canyon is cool. Thanks for telling me that means I'm extremely proud of my enormous vulva. I thought I just liked the scenery. Now I'm thinking I should be charging entry fees.

I know a number of American people, and they're all very friendly. My little list at the end was an - admittedly small - attempt to not be so angry. I guess I should have left it out, if that's the best you can come up with.

It's hard not to feel angry when your prime minister is sending Australian troops off to an American war that won't be legal. I thought we'd learned our lesson about other people's wars at Gallipoli in 1914.

Nothing deadly in Australia? Hah! You should meet the brown snake that lives in our garden. And if you run into Steve Irwin on a bad day, ooh, crikey :D

I never said I didn't believe in the right not to vote - just that it's shocking that the US people don't vote in such droves - and then this is the government you get. I'll bet the number of Americans who oppose this war is greater than the number that actually voted in the recent Congressional elections.

Would you prefer it if I just said "I don't believe in the ideas behind the bill of rights?"
We don't have a bill of rights in Australia, so it's one of those nice things we can dream about.

So, by all means, continue to flame. Feel free to streak if you're in the mood, it's very refreshing. And be nice to the squirrels

Name: Karen Jackson
Email Address: grandmascrotum@yahoo.com.au
URL: http://www.streakerama.com

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IP Address: 202.43.1.208
TraceRoute: http://www.opus1.com/htbin/traceroute?debug=NO&query=202.43.1.208
WhoIs: http://ws.arin.net/cgi-bin/whois.pl?queryinput=202.43.1.208

Now that I've gone to read Tex's lovely comments, I had to come back and thank all of you for not using the terms "arseclown", "assfuck" and so on. My opinion of you as thinking people who can debate a topic reasonably is so much improved by it.

But, should you feel the need to lower yourself to Tex's level, let me respond in kind: fuck you.

See, that cleared EVERYTHING up, didn't it?

Have a nice day.

Freak.

Update: Tim Blair has further commentary on her espousal of nudism and the political views of the King of Bhutan.

Editor in the house

Solonor has come up with a unique way of dealing with a moron's comments. Excellent.

Going to the dogs

Customs of my hometown: whenever it's a slow news week in Miami, there are always the illegal pit bull fights to investigate. (Other reliable sources of South Florida downtime filler: cockfighting, Those Wacky Santerías, corruption at City Hall.)

(Via the Meatriarchy.)

United we stand

Not all European leaders are against action against Saddam Hussein. For instance, these leaders:

Messrs. Aznar, Durão Barroso, Berlusconi, Blair, Medgyessy, Miller and Fogh Rasmussen are, respectively, the prime ministers of Spain, Portugal, Italy, the U.K., Hungary, Poland and Denmark. Mr. Havel is the Czech president.

Read their letter.

Via the Agonist and Jay Reding.

We've got FTL rocketships too

Uh oh, the cat's out of the bag. That's right, puny foreign countries: we've got the anti-gravity device, and we're only sharing with the other kids in the class who suck up to us! Now, don't you ungrateful nations (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, North Korea, Germany, FRANCE: I'm looking at you) wish you'd been a little nicer to us? Who's got the flying carpets now, Ahmed? Neener neener!

(Via the most grateful Tim Blair. We will make him head eunuch sales manager.)

Neat MT hack

Damn, it works. This could come in handy. Via the Passionate Ailurophile.

Further plans for the blog: smilies for comments, formatting buttons for comments (maybe), show/hide inline comments (maybe), show/hide extended blog entries, skins to change the blog look. Real Soon Now.

Update: now you can see the comments on the same page as the entries (click on "display the quatloos" below each entry), do the same with extended entries, and there are simplified formatting links for links, italics, and bolding in the comments box. (Just follow the directions -- this does not work in Mozilla, by the way, and I'm not so sure about any other browser than IE.)

All these scripts except the first one are from Scriptygoddess.

All the girlies say

Hey everyone, visit Aaron. He's lonely. Or something.

Going squirrely

Tex puts the kibosh on yet another inept anti-American diatribe from one of the Australian media's pet leftists. The author being so fisked is one Karen Jackson, and her topic is "ten reasons to be an anti-American." I'll leave Tex's fisking of her pathetic "reasons" alone, since it is perfect. I'll just say a few things about the tiny list of "reasons to like the US" that she sticks on the end. Here's the list:

1. The Simpsons and Seinfeld.
2. Star Wars (except for Jar Jar Binks)
3. Squirrels
4. The ideals behind their bill of rights.
5. The Grand Canyon
6. The friendliness of everyday Americans

1 and 2: Well, how nice, she likes our sitcoms. I'd like to point out that only an industrial juggernaut like the United States could produce something like The Simpsons (maybe a simple, pre-industrial, basket-weaving culture of the sort that finds favor with many Marxist Lites™ could come up with the concept, but where would they get all the Oooiiilllll necessary to produce the variety of plastic film and other petroleum-based products needed to record and broadcast it?), but I am sure my point would go right over her fluffy little head.

3: Squirrels??? WTF is she talking about? You know what? I don't think I want to know.

4: Yes, and those ideals Ms. Jackson would discard without a second thought if she actually had to apply them to the real world. We have already seen what she thinks of the right to bear arms, and the freedom to abstain from voting.

5: There are so many things I could say about what this indicates psychologically and morally. Let's see if anyone gets what I mean. (Feel free to comment.)

Oh -- and she may find number 6 much diminished if many Americans find and read her drivel.

I still don't get the squirrels.

Update: reader Lawrence Haws sends the scoop on Ms. Jackson:

She's a candidate for the Australian Democrat party. Her screed on why she joined that party:

Like most people, I had become increasingly disillusioned with mainstream politics. Australia was being privatised, deregulated, dumbed-down and corporatised, while the two major parties happily looked on. I despaired that the only benchmarks that seemed to matter were economic figures, while social and environmental concerns were dismissed as trifles. The globalisation steamroller seemed to be crushing ordinary people, especially those from rural areas, while our elected representatives scored bickering political points for the evening news.

There had to be another option, and the Democrats offered it.

I believe in this party because it stands for balance and fairness, honesty and principles. It offers real democracy, and real representation. No other party allows ordinary members to vote on policies or party leadership.

The Democrats want people and the environment put back into economic equations. They want rural people to have the same opportunities as urban Australians. They want fair trade, not free trade. They want government services to be maintained, not sold off. And they want to return integrity to politics.

The King of Bhutan, a small country near India, recently proclaimed that he preferred "gross national happiness" to gross national product. I think this is a philosophy Australia needs to take on board, and I think the Democrats are the best party to provide it.

I find it interesting that someone who invokes the egalitarian ideals she does would use a quote from the hereditary monarch of a small, isolationist country like Bhutan. More blatant "third world, non-Western cultures don't count" attitude from another leftwinger.

And here is her hobby, apparently: streaking. (Warning: this site is not for the weak of stomach.)

SOTU

So, today was National Sick of the War Day. Did anyone stay home?

Pinter-mocking update

I run the risk that my trolls will start using both hands again in order to communicate their ire, but I have been alerted that one of them professional journal thingies have taken note of the little Harold Pinter poetry slam that we here in the Blog Multiverse engaged in recently. The author's favorite of all our efforts was Loretta Serrano's Monkees Theme takeoff, and Tim Blair's post gets a shout-out too. With luck, this meme will multiply and spread. I have a dream, a dream that someday no Advanced Placement high school class will have to suffer through analysis of one of Pinter's awful plays...

(Via Loretta's link to the article.)

Film from heaven, audience from hell

James Lileks saw the Two Towers. The movie passed his (not really very high -- Nemesis? Eek!) Geek Meter of Approval. The audience did not. I must say that I have been lucky each time (only three! shut up) I saw the movie that I had a pretty decent audience. Even if there were irritating giggles at some of Gollum's speeches, they all shared this characteristic: during the last scene of the movie, which is where Gollum has his final, going-back-to-the-Dark-Side speech, there was Absolute. Dead. Silence. I mean it, you couldn't hear a pin drop. It wasn't because everyone had fallen asleep out of boredom either: as the credits started and the lights came up, instead of springing up from their chairs like chickens released from a crate the way most movie-goers tend to do at the start of credits, the audiences to this movie got up slowly and thoughtfully. Anyway -- if there was any absurd pantomime being done by anyone at the theaters I was at, it was out of my field of vision.

I agree about the disappointment of the "Tolkien-inspired" Led Zeppelin lyrics, but not because they were inspired by Tolkien -- it was because they sucked. Led Zeppelin's lyrics were hardly their strong point. "Squeeze my lemon, baby, 'til the juice runs down my leg..."

Fun with lard, and other ephemera

What I did today: well, today was Nonfiction Writing class today. I need to set up a separate journal for that class (I'm already two weeks behind on that project); I could just type it in Word, but I feel most comfortable with a web setup for journaling. So that's number one. Number two, after class I went and ordered my new computer. My baby should be here in a week or so. No, I didn't just pick up a junk-filled Emachine at Compusa, that's not good enough for the princess. I had needs: specifically, 512 MB of RAM, a 40 GB hard drive, one of those AMD processors (comparable, so I was told, to a 2.4 GB Intel; we'll see), and a CD-RW (I forget the speed; adequate -- I'm not going to be running a music studio or burning CDs every hour).

Frodo and Pippin stare in awe at the lard sculptures.

After some research I decided to go ahead with XP Pro. Soon I will have a machine on which I will be able to open up more than one lousy program and not have cack out on me. I figure it will get me through a couple more years, like my current machine did.

Today I stopped to eat lunch at a local Korean restaurant. Yes I love Korean food; no, they don't serve Rover baked in a casserole. I hadn't been there in over a year and the waitress recognized me. I guess they don't get many lone Anglo women at their place. Too bad: the food is great, and the ambiance is sufficiently Not Chinese; they have the usual tacky Chinese-restaurant lacquer and tasselled fake lamp decor, but they also have these neat weird masks on the wall (I want one! I heart masks) and they play Korean tv on a widescreen in the back. Not that I was able to understand anything on the Korean news channel they were playing. The Korean subtitles were no help at all. But it was still interesting. Many things were confirmed:

1. Damn, Korea looks cold. In the outdoor shots everyone was standing around in one of those frozen fogs. Brr!
2. They are still quite exercised over the accidental running over of those two Korean girls by some servicemen. They showed footage of a rally of some sort complete with photos of the dead kids, flags, upset people, etc.
3. Hyundais! They drive 'em. Who knew?

It was all very interesting, but I kind of wish they would have been playing something like the movie they were playing the last time I went: it was some sort of costume/magical powers/sword-and-sorcery thing, Korean style (or maybe it was Chinese or Japanese -- my memory is foggy). The plot was simple enough to make out even if it was all in foreign: there was this kind of surly hero in a red robe, a female wizardess of some sort who kept interfering/fighting with him and against him, a villain (you could tell because he had his hair pulled back in an intimidating way, while the hero had messy, I'm-too-busy-saving-the-world hair), and some Loyal Peasant Kids on the sidelines who seemed to function as a kind of Greek chorus. There was much Oriental magical kung fu, and the hero and heroine/wizardess got to die tragically together at the end (after the villain was dispatched, of course). It was totally cool, and I was reminded of this film when I first saw the fight scenes in Fellowship of the Rings. There was also a similarity to the costuming. It made me wonder if Peter Jackson was at all inspired by Asian sword-and-sorcery-and-kung-fu movies. It would not surprise me at all. (I haven't listened to all the interviews on my dvd nor have I read all the articles on the making of the film, so if he has said anything about this I have missed it so far.)

On a final note: in Luxembourg they have something called the Culinary World Cup, aka "the cooks' Olympics." One of the contests is to see who can carve the best statue out of the aforementioned greasy rendered substance. This year's bronze winner was a lard statue of Saruman the White (well, the "Off-White"). Try that with 100% pure safflower oil, organic food weenies.

One peep to rule them all

In honor of the 50th anniversary of the invention of a certain inedible sugary thing, I bring you Lord of the Peeps. I also have a confession: I still have my peeps from last Easter in the fridge. My plan is to make them part of some sort of postmodern art thing, which I will sell for thousands of dollars to some rich liberal art collectors with more money than sense. Baby wants a new Miata.

The man in the back said everyone attack

Bill Whittle has written another good one. I'll just present a sample:

We and two or three other nations, old and true friends who have stood by us through flame and terror, now confront a menace the likes of which we have not seen for almost a thousand years. We face an adversary in the full bloom of romance with death and destruction, an enemy willing – eager -- to spray our cities with a virus it has taken armies of scientists and doctors, working diligently through centuries of research and learning, to eradicate from the blood-soak rolls of history. We face fanatics who would bring down the entire world, themselves included, in a radioactive Armageddon, secure in their own twisted souls of the heavenly rewards of sexual gratification and revenge for their many abject failures. We face people such as this, people who are so far beyond the pale of human mercy and so corrupted by black and bitter rage that they must be killed, for nothing else will stop them, nothing – as they tell us at every opportunity.

We have blithely ignored them for many years, turned a deaf ear to their warnings and fatwahs, turned an even more blinded eye to their procession of assassinations, massacres, bombings and attacks. Despite our recent and proven record of aiding and defending innocent Muslims in Kuwait, the Balkans, and elsewhere, we have been singled out as a Satan, a nation of sub-human infidels, and been the target of slander and incitement to murder that would have shamed the most fanatical Jesuit in the Spanish Inquisition.

A few weeks ago someone asked on Charles Johnsons' site (link lost I'm afraid -- update: the direct link to the pertinent post, not the link to LGF!) why we care so much about the "Arab street." I replied something along the lines that it was a normal human response to be concerned about a group of people who were so obviously miserable, and to want to fix their situation somehow. See, our responses are normal, theirs are not. Go read the rest of Bill's essay. (PS: the title is a shout-out; he'll know what I mean.)

It's Miss Harris if you're nasty

Bo-ring. Have you tried reading "liberal bloggers" lately? I have come to the conclusion that I can't possibly be a liberal -- even though I hold all sorts of supposedly liberal opinions -- I think gay people should be able to get married and adopt kids (why not? they can't be any worse than some of the "normal" hetero parents out there), I don't worship any god and I don't care if others do, I think everyone deserves equality of opportunity (that is, don't put obstacles deliberately in the way of people based on ridiculous characteristics like skin color), and so on. But apparently today to be a liberal you have to be a paranoid, nasty, name-calling, mud-slinging, knee-jerking, accusatory (as in, accusing people who disagree with you of being a troll or starting a flame war), miserable fuck.

"Man, that shizzit is nasty." "I'm depressed now."

No, I'm not going to link to the pertinent blogs, because they are legion, and they know who they are. Also, the whole right-vs.-left bitchfest is starting to depress me. Obviously this whole Looming Shadow of War thing is starting to get to people. But day-umn, momma never promised you a rose garden. Grow a spine. Stop whining about our Eville, Darth-Vader-like (only without the charm) president and his Dastardly Cabal of Snidely Whiplashes who are planning this very instant to steal candy from all the cute little orphan babies. Christ, what do we have of Bush -- at worst, another four years after next year. Oh, I know, it's just so painful having to wait for foour more years to get rid of a leader! It's almost as bad as having to endure a lifetime with a dictator! Only it's not, because it's not at all like having to endure an entire freaking lifetime with a dictator. If our current president annoys you so much, find a candidate who pleases you better. We're a free effing country. And for ghod's sake, stop with the useless "anti-war" marches. They do nothing for the Suffering Third-World Peoples™ that Evil Fascist Amerikkka is supposedly always stomping on; they do nothing to change the mind of people who don't get a coolness jones from being around Sixties rejects; they don't do anything except tie up traffic. Oh -- and your complaints about being subject Real Soon Now to the stamping jackboot of oppression because someone on a blog made fun of your assertion that Bush was the worst world leader since Hitler is not a brave and principled stand, it's pathetic, and makes you look like a moron, especially when a simple Google search turns up thousands of accounts of real oppression going on in those foreign countries you say you want to "save" from the dreaded American hegemon.

PS: here is what one person thinks of the American and European "human shields" that have descended upon his country. He calls them "war tourists." Funny, I don't think that that is the impression the "human shields" intended to give.

Takin' Retards to the Zoo

I get home tonight and download my email (after first deleting the spam from the server with Mailwasher). I read all my mail with that program first. So I already knew what was going to appear in my inbox -- this little missive:

Hi, my name is Tom Schell and i am a Libertarian. We believe that our military should be nutural from world affairs and we should have free trade with all. We believe that if our military continues to bomb and rule the world that it will only lead to more anger, death and terror around the world. Winning world war 1 and 2 and the cold war and a varity of other wars has not dont a thing to bring peace to the world. The more we bomb little kids and citys around the world the more those people will feel the same way you felt on September 11th. The idea of liberty is based on peace, justice and economic prosparty for all with out useing force.

Spelling left as is, believe me. Is this what the Libertarian Party has descended to, farming their email campaign out to illiterates? If this was some sort of recruitment spam, it didn't work.

Reefer Madness

I don't follow sports, so I missed the new anti-drug commercial that aired during the Superbowl this evening. Sounds familiar....

Murderers, Inc.

Take a good look at the guy in the photograph in this post -- the one clutching his notebook to his chest and trying to get the pile of human lard in the passenger seat to listen to him. Take a real good look, because he's probably dead now, along with his family. Thanks to the United Nations officials who did nothing as the Iraqi guards dragged the man away. It is obvious from the expression on the man's face that he had something very important to tell the UN officials, but they decided to "not get involved." I hope Saddam is paying them a lot.

When are we closing down that organization and putting that building in New York to some good use?

Update: Dipnut as more on this. Apparently CNN and other news agencies are whitewashing the story. Great.

And one more: an expanded commentary, with an extra picture of the man being dragged off, from Trojan Horseshoes. That is what oppression looks like, people.

The circus has come to town

To Porto Alegre in Brazil, to be specific. Yes, it's the "World Social Forum" which is the latest gathering of the clowns and jugglers of the left that has converged upon the hapless South American city. David at Samizdata has the scoop. Part of their concerns, along with making sure that every single cause gets its own parade, is something called the "landless peoples' movement." Say, I've got no land; I rent an apartment. Can I be part of this cool movement? You know, if these jokers had pooled together all the money that it cost putting this "World Social Forum" together, they could have bought the landless people some land.

She thinks she's the passionate one

I've been skimming the blogs and other commentary re last weekend's anti-war fizzlefest. We already know that much of it was coordinated by the Papa Joe fan club that is A.N.S.W.E.R. So of course the proceedings were hijacked from the beginning by people who went into mourning the day the Berlin Wall was torn down. But criticism of this is met with the usual defense of communists and their sycophants: they might be wrongheaded, but they're passionate about social justice!

Well BFD. Excuse me if I seem underimpressed by that argument. "Passionate" people are a dime a dozen, and the most cursory skimming of any history book will reveal that passion has never been in short supply in the entire course of human interaction. You can be "passionate" about anything. As I recall, I was once really passionate about staying up late on a school night to watch tv. What has always been a meager, easily depleted, and rare commodity is cold, boring old reason, the application of which has led to more advances in "social justice" than any shrieker carrying a sign or throwing a rock through a window. Emotions are easy; solutions are hard.

If only we used our power for good

Oh look, Dave Barry has a blog now. Guess what inspired him?

OK, thanks to Ken Layne I now have a real blog, sort of.

I will now spend days and days trying to figure out how this works, as opposed to doing anything productive.

Now that's power. Tremble, Big Media.

There's a Fire Burning in the Crack of Doom

Oh dear, the intrepid researchers at the Landover Baptist Church have uncovered the truth about The Two Towers. Another facet to the Film Industry Cabal's plot to destroy the moral underpinnings of Western Society has been uncovered! Curses! Foiled again! On to Plan B: Return of the King, aka, Frodo Lights Gollum's Fire. Included in the article: a snippet of the film that apparently was deemed too avant-garde for the theatrical release; hopefully it will appear in the extended dvd. November, kiddies!

(Yes, I am aware that the "Landover Baptist Church" is a parody site.)

Via A Gaggle of Gals (and One Guy).

Movement of the Blogs

Balloon Juice has moved to a new site. It is no longer languishing in the dungeons of Blogspot, and is now a member of the MT Army. Huzzah!

A new blog

Welcome Angua's First Blog to the world. Looks promising: give her props. We needed a werewolf-policewoman around this place.

Sick of it all

This is hilarious: one of contrarian gadfly Hesiod's readers suggested that Tuesday, January 28th be "'National' Call in Sick of the War Day." I guess neither He's Odd nor his sycophants readers have ever seen that old SNL sketch where everyone stays home and the Russians invade. (And Oliver Willis has just gone even deeper into unreasoning emotionalism in his opposition to war. Now the idea of war on Saddam Hussein's way-past-its-shelf-life, kiddy-and-athlete-torturing, environment-destroying regime is nothing but "pandering to our most aggresive (sic) and base instinct" and Stephen Den Beste's latest essay on the matter is no more than a "love letter" to same. He even has a Big Brother graphic to illustrate his tired, overused point. Jebus.)

Blogspot alert

By the way -- Blogspot's archives seemed to be bungholed again, which is why I have not been leaving any permalinks today to individual posts on Blogger-run sites I reference. Hooray for Movable Type. (On a side note, this looks interesting. All you people intimidated by MT might want to check it out. Via Stacy Tabb.)

Never forget

Remember Daniel Pearl.

(Via Damian Penny.)

Leave It To Uday

The No-War-For-Any-Reason crowd might want to take a look at these articles so they can see just who and what they are suggesting we abandon to their fate in Iraq: IOC investigating alleged torture of Iraqi athletes (via Captain Yips), and the children in the "children's prison" (via my own Googling). And here's something for the Enviroweenies: what about Saddam's efforts to turn the marshes of Iraq (possibly where human beings first learned about agriculture, and once considered to be the inspiration for the Garden of Eden) into something more closely resembling the Plain of Gorgoroth? All he needs is his own little homemade Mt. Doom, and Sauron Saddam has got it made.

But war is so icky. You're right. Call it off.

Opinion from Down Under

Under the bed, that is, where some letter writers to the The Sydney Morning Herald apparently spend their lives cowering. Tim Blair made fun of one of the letters, but if you ask me he didn't pick the gem of the crop. That, in my humble opinion, was the next-to-the-last letter, which I will now "fisk." It's been a while since I gave somebody a good fisking. Let's take on one "HM" from Somewhere in Oz:

Not only should Australia not be part of any war with Iraq, no one should be involved in the ultra-conservative US led drive to control the world.

Too late, muahahahaha!

Sure, Saddam is nasty. So what? There are dozens of distasteful dictator types out there (I'm sure GWB qualifies). Does that mean we have to attack all of them? Anyone who thought so would soon be carted off the the asylum.

Dear Iraqi people: I'm sorry, we don't care about the nastiness of your government. You are quite free to suffer the depredations of the Boys from Tikrit without our interference, though we hope you like this nice sympathy card we sent.

Ask yourself, apart from buying Australian crops, what has Iraq ever done to Australia? Hmm?

So the purchase of Australian crops is a bad thing? Is that what HM is saying? Hmmm?

The only reason that the coalition is keen on starting this war is fear. The Americans are scared sh*tless that an Islamic country like (choose one) might actually get some real power (ie nuclear power) and change the staus quo.

I'm so glad to see that the idea of a loose cannon, frothing-at-the-mouth, raving loony Islamic nation getting hold of nuclear weapons doesn't worry everyone around the world. I mean, I wouldn't want people to have their sleep disturbed by silly things like that.

For many years, the US and UK other hangers on, like Australia, have enjoyed manipulating the rest of the world into 'trade' that is heavily balanced in 'our' favour. Imagine how the US, et al, would respond if some piss poor third world country decided that enough was enough. That's right 'Dad', they'd kick their butt all over the playground.

Hey, piss-poor Third Worlders, HM cares about you! He's going to protect you, right there from the keyboard. Darn that silly old "trade" stuff anyway! People shouldn't trade things, they should stay at home and use stuff they grew or built in their own back yard! Like that keyboard and computer that HM is using, which is built out of 100% Certified Organic Hemp.

Anyone who thinks that war is a good idea should stop to think of the human cost. Not only will many civilains die, Australian soldiers could, very possibly, come home dead.

Wow. Man, that is so deep and profound -- I had never thought of the "human cost" of war before! The scales have fallen from my eyes -- civilians can get killed! And what's more, soldiers can come home dead! Why, Bush told us that they would just get candy and fresh cheese! What a liar! Boo!

Now, can anyone tell me why that is acceptable? John Howard cannot. Neither can Bush or Blair. War is not acceptable in any form.

Why isn't war acceptable? Because it isn't! I am HM, and I have spoken!

Forget a UN sanctioned war. If the UN inspectors find no reason to justify a breach of the resolutions, the US will make some up and the UN will capitulate. YOU need to stand up and make your voice heard. No War.

How does HM know this? Don't ask any questions of your betters; HM just knows! He (or she, or... it) knows all! So make your voice heard! Say what HM wants you to say, or he/she/it will send another cliché-ridden, sweeping-generalities-filled letter to the editor! Hurry, Aussies -- do it for the Children™.

Update: Dave does the fisk.

Whiplash politics

Can someone tell me what the hell that was that just flew past? First, it seems that Bush put some guy who is maybe one inch to the left of the Godhatesfags.com dude as the head of the AIDs Advisory Commission, whatever that is. There was all sorts of uproar from all over the place. Then faster than you could say "Mario Andretti in a souped-up Lamborghini" the we-should-cure-the-homosexuals (how, with a magical spell?) guy says "Nope, not me, I'm not going to do it." Bush is now I guess free to appoint some guy he really wanted as the head of this group, or maybe abandon the whole project as a revenue-suck that hasn't contributed so much as a microscope lens to the cause of curing AIDS, or maybe just look like a bumbling idiot on domestic policy which is par for the course for Republican administrations. The problem with the Republicans is they are so good at handling the foreign riffraff, and so hamfisted at dealing with their own country's problems. Here's another example of this tendency, one which has shortened their shelf life considerably. Great priorities, guys.

Takin' Retards to the Internet Café

The mentally challenged are out in force tonight, so guess what kiddies, it's time for a brand new Banned List! Tonight's special comes from the British Isles, and the offerings are as limp and stale as English railway cuisiine. Here they are -- the IPs with their "noms de stupidité" next to them:

81.132.97.38 -- Yoda, Gerty Nonads, Rolf Harris, Arnie, Reg Teh Veg, Britney

195.92.168.165 -- King Dong

80.1.7.204 -- Sir Sand Goblin, gonads, joingle, James, YARBLES, urm, oil, Basil Brush

62.254.0.6 -- sack

81.130.223.25 -- Bob, cheesemonger,

81.132.109.202 -- happy

213.106.100.253 -- President Bush, sherz

81.132.115.147 -- (too chicken, or braindead, to leave a name)

I'm sure these are just for starters. What, has a curfew been enacted in England or something? Anyway, it looks as if these gents and/or gentesses took umbrage to this little post of mine. Who would have known a dried-up old monkey like Harold Pinter to have so many fans? Personally I think these are all just rent-boys he hired, but then I've been accused of being cynical.

Nature update

We could use a little global warming right now -- there is ice forming on New York City's waterways. Meanwhile, down here Central Florida the temperature is supposed to drop to 24 degrees Fahrenheit tonight. Time to break out those old "Aagh! The Ice Age is Coming!" stories from the seventies vault...

(Via Asymmetrical Information.)

Report from Baghdad

It looks as if the Iraqi people haven't gotten the message that they are supposed to be against the Evil, Imperialistic US invading their country and dropping bombs on their cottages and cute little hobbit-children and getting Saddam's moustache mussed; on the contrary, they, or at least a portion of them, are ready to risk their lives to see an end to Saddam's regime. This article in the Times of London has the story of signs of rebellion breaking out. Read it, or go to Tim Blair's site and read the excerpts if the article is registration-only.

For all you RPG'ers out there

Click to see the full graphic:

Judge throws out stupid lawsuit, shocks nation

Someone forgot to unscrew a federal justice's skull and remove his brains, and tragedy occurred: the fat kids who were suing McDonalds for their own act of being unable to stop shoving Big Macs down their own gullets were told by Judge Robert W. Sweet in no uncertain terms that their porcine condition is their own damn fault. I would like to impart my own message of uplift to the heart-broken would-be millionaires: "Ha ha, Fatty McFatperson and your little sister Tubby! You don't get to make money off of your own inability to control yourself! Now go on a freakin' diet and exercise regimen like everyone else has to do. Oh -- and kick your parents in the nads for letting you do this to yourself."

Dumb Poets Society

First of all, all you guys who have emailed me and posted your poems in the comments here rock. Here are some more efforts from others across the bloggyverse:

Bigwig helps Mr. Pinter by providing an edited and "corrected" version of the poem.

Tim Blair provides some efforts here.

These were sent to Glenn Reynolds.

I'll put up more links as I find them, and later, when I get time, Maybe I'll gather them all and put them on a separate page, including the ones in my comments.

Blogs: saving the world of literature from one dumb writer at a time.

Cool web thing

Draw a picture with this cool web thing.

(Via Silflay Hraka.)

One last cigarette

Just one more: the PC crowd has airbrushed the cigarette out of Paul's hand for posters of the cover of the Abbey Road album. You know, I am surprised no one has started up a campaign against the anti-tobacco people for dissing the culture of the Native American. After all, they are the ones who discovered the stuff.

(Via greeblie blog.)

From the Has-Been Author Files

And here on this side of the pond, we have Stormin' Norman Mailer to deal with. In an attempt to get people to read his boring, swollen tomes, the murderer-coddling typist offers forth his opinions on George Bush, Saddam Hussein, and everything. In the course of his brilliant (urp) dissection of the Coming American Empire, he drops this gem:

"...You have to go back to melodramas in the 1850's where a villain with a great big mustache leaped onto the stage to defile the maiden before you get someone as good as Saddam Hussein as an enemy. Ho Chi Minh had that wonderful saintly look that made life much easier for a good protest movement."

Damn. In my next life I want to be a cute little Oriental man with a wispy goatee, so everyone will fawn all over me and send me money and Hollywood actresses when I decide to kill all my enemies and cause the death of countless others.

Norman Mailer, the macho man of the desk-chair set. He's always tried to come off as a rough, tough, he-man male writer of the Hemingway set. Here's his quote on women writers: ""The sniffs I get from the ink of women are always fey, old hat, Quaintsy Goysy, tiny, too dykily psychotic." I always thought that quote too femme for words. I'll bet his high school yearbook called him the grad most likely to surrender to the French.

(Via Juan Gato.)

Stupid poem alert

Ooh, goody, goody -- it's time for another bad poetry contest! And guess what: it's another British man of letters who is the culprit! None other than Harold "America Ignores My Plays So They Suck" Pinter. What has happened to the island which produced Shakespeare, Donne, Kipling, and Tennyson? Well, let's see:

Here they go again,
The Yanks in their armoured parade
Chanting their ballads of joy
As they gallop across the big world
Praising America's God.
The gutters are clogged with the dead
The ones who couldn't join in
The others refusing to sing
The ones who are losing their voice
The ones who've forgotten the tune.

The riders have whips which cut.
Your head rolls onto the sand
Your head is a pool in the dirt
Your head is a stain in the dust
Your eyes have gone out and your nose
Sniffs only the pong of the dead
And all the dead air is alive
With the smell of America's God.

© Harold Pinter, January 2003

"The pong of the dead? WTF?

Okay, boys and girls, it's my turn to call for a Bad Poetry Contest. Send your submissions to me, put 'em in the comments, or post 'em on your own blog and send me the URL! Now to work: "The Kong of the dead...", "The Pac-man of the dead...", "The Super Mario Brothers of the dead..."

(Via Damian Penny, who got it from Andrew Sullivan.)

Lord of the Rings stamps

For all you numismatists out there, New Zealand has released a set of stamps commemorating the Lord of the Rings movies. Drool. (Hey, I used to collect stamps. I think I still have them somewhere. Shut up.)

Update: I meant "philatelists," of course. Well hey, I used to collect coins too. Don't know what happened to my non-valuable coin collection. Oh well.

Now I shall go off and forget more words for things.

Miracles of Modern Medicine

More of that horrible hegemonic oppressive paternalistic fascist Western science: doctors performing experimental surgery not only managed to reattach this kid's head to his body, but the kid is back on his feet and playing basket ball.

How awful. Destroy the US and institute sharia law immediately.

(Via Dave Tepper.)

¿Quien es mas sexy?

Is it Elijah "Froggie" Wood (Frodo) or Orlando "Potato Nose" Bloom (Legolas)? Come on, you know you want to know.

Quite frankly, I think Sam's the diamond in the rough here. He might be fat, but he's loyal (girls appreciate that) and he can cook (girls appreciate that too.)

I had gone a day or so without a Tolkien post, hadn't I? Can't have that. This should be a tie-in to Steve H.'s food porn. Go for it, Steve! Steve hearts my Tolkien posts.

(Via Chris.)

The real reason there are no more hobbits

After repeated viewing of Fellowship of the Ring, with its many closeups of sausages and mushrooms and things sizzling in Sam's pans, I was compelled to go the the grocery store and acquire: potatoes, bacon, mushrooms, tomatoes. So much for my "good" cholesterol...

From the Pointless Grousing Files

What on earth is this woman's problem? Well, one thing might be the fact that she thinks the apparent dearth of nice waiters in her native country (New Zealand) is a "tragedy." Um -- it's not a tragedy unless someone dies. That's in the rule book.

There's an attempt to pull in linkage by invoking the Lord of the Rings juggernaut (one of her puzzling complaints is that there are going to be more visitors to that land because of the movie, which she decries even though she seems perversely proud of the fact that she has "taken this fair land for granted my whole life.") Well, speaking for myself, I have wanted to visit New Zealand ever since I was a child and my great-aunt and grandparents went on a trip there. I was taken in further by a variety of National Geographic articles and such. Darn those hordes of tourists anyway, they might encourage NZ to spiff up its (she says) lousy service industry and then writers like her will have one less thing to complain about.

Anyway, I live in a major tourist area, so if she wants points on how to cope with the expected onslaught of foreigners to her pristine shores she can always write me.

Porno for Peace

[WARNING: NOT SAFE FOR WORK, HOME, OR THE LIBRARY]
Kevin Parrott sent out the Call, and Michele came through! (Yes, that pun was intended.)

As all around them entwined and cheered, forming an orgy of peaceful feelings, Smash and Blaze came together in a frenzy of lust, passion and a desire to rid the world of capitalist pigs.

"Let's do it for anarchy," Blaze whispered breathlessly.

"Let's do it for the children of Iraq," Smash mumbled in Blaze's ear.

Read the rest. You know you want to.

[/WARNING: NOT SAFE FOR WORK, HOME, OR THE LIBRARY]

War protests: what are they good for?

Check out these photos of the protests this weekend. Notice the "hundreds of thousands" -- uh, that is, thousands -- well, hundreds, anyway, of protestors. Notice also the carefully nuanced and subtle nonverbal statements (i.e., vandalism). And then read this letter from "veterans of movements against the war," which contains this exhortation:

...if everytime they bombed a community of hospital elsewhere: our schools were closed--by students and workers, our businesses were shutdown, the city and rual streets made into autonomous zones--of play and struggle, the malls, banks, and oil HQs that benefit from the war were trashed, and recruitment centers torched, and the police made to use tactics of war on our own citizens--They may rethink their imperialist war. (All sic.)

They link to this website.

(Via the Portable Matthew.)

Ring a ding dong

Oh yeah. I found and watched the MTV Council of Elrond spoof that is the second dvd "easter egg" on the Fellowship of the Rings extended dvd. I am now permanently traumatized by the sight of Jack Black's bare behind.

Bizarre foreign customs

I guess it's true that the various English-speaking nations of the world are divided by a common language; or else this Australian reporter now assigned to the US has had her leg successfully pulled. Or else she has, like so many expatriate Americans are accused of doing, ensconced herself in a cocoon of fellow Aussies so as to keep the natives at a safe distance. I can't really figure out any other possible explanations for this:

Shov told me the trees have real meaning for Americans. They find our practice of heading out and buying a box of balls and tinsel and decorations quite offensive. Here, most of the tree ornaments have been gifts, or items of significance at one time or another. That way, your tree has a history, and as you put it up every year, you remember different people and loved ones by what you hang on the tree.

Um... whatever. Then again, this woman has had trouble "recognizing the coins here" even though they have the denominations printed right on them, in English not Sanskrit. Maybe she should try out the American custom of having her eyes checked.

Via Angie Schultz Also -- side note: to the post above where she complains about the California-bashing supposedly engaged in by Glenn Reynolds -- I don't see that he is doing a lot of California bashing as opposed to Bay Area bashing (the San Francisco Bay Area), and to be fair most of it is from people whose emails he posted. Then one letter-writer took offense at a post where all he did was reprint pictures of some of the peace-loons' ridiculous signs and quote a correspondent who went to the peace rally in San Francisco. He is obviously not impressed with the peace protestors, but who is (who isn't involved with them, anyway). Then in this post, again, he does say it is too easy to engage in regional bashing, and reprints some of the emails from people in California telling him about the whole rest of the state that is not apparently given over to leftist idiocy. All I can say is I have some friends who moved to San Francisco, it being a lifelong dream of theirs. Well, as of this year they are back in Florida, which they had condemned as hell on earth. Let's just say San Francisco proved to not exactly be the place of their dreams. But that is only one city, and California is a big state.

As for myself, I have been to Los Angeles, and I was more favorably impressed than not. The city atmosphere and horrid traffic did not bother me: I lived in Miami, notorious for its urban annoyances and the insane driving. The weather in July was dry and cool -- I mean it was what we considered winter weather in South Florida: in the seventies during the day and in the fifties at night. That immediately raised it several points in my estimation. There were lots of good restaurants, such as the Thai restaurant that was open until 4am. There were plenty of parklands around -- we went up to that observatory whose name I forget (it's famous). Having mountain ranges inside greater city limits was a thrill to a woman from the flat swamplands. There was Canter's, open twenty-four hours. There was a Cuban restaurant, which although staffed by Mexicans served real Cuban coffee. And so on. (The beach was a joke -- that pathetic little brown strip of sand -- but I don't care much about the beach so that was no big deal.)

I've heard horror stories about the public-pooping, in-your-face bums and crack whores of San Francisco, as well as the Politically Correct insane asylum that is the Berkely area, but perhaps this is an exaggeration. In any case, California-bashing is as old as the state of California. People have been making fun of the place ever since it was known as the place to go hunt for gold and get killed over a no good worthless claim (excuse me, I just had a flashback to the Marshall Tucker Band, it won't happen again). It's kind of late in the day to complain about it now; if Cali hasn't buckled under the weight of all the jokes by now, then it never will. Until, of course, the Big One hits and it falls into the ocean.

How to conquer your nightmares

Make them into a best-selling graphic novel series. (Or turn them into stories anyway; maybe that's why I rarely have nightmares.)

[Note: that link is the closest to a permalink Gaiman's blog has for now -- I had an idea to see what the archives looked like; it's the entry for January 20th.]

Crippled inside

I like Maryland. My dad grew up there. I thought Baltimore was an interesting town, and I especially liked Annapolis. I even thought of moving up there someday, so I could be near but not actually have to live in either Washington D.C. or Philadelphia, two cities I also love to visit (but would not want to live in for various reasons). Oh well, another plan bites the dust.

(Via Kim Du Toit.)

Designer Callout

Say, has anyone developed the Naked Peace Protestor TrueType font yet? If not, what are you waiting for?

Update: Steve H. has come through with a bitmap font. Now someone who can afford a fontmaker program get cracking!

Star struck

Bill Whittle is back with a long essay on celebrities who seem to think that the fact they earn lots of money for pretending to be other people makes them Our Betters.

I'll use this as an opportunity to remark on the notion of the idea of the artist as a superior form of human, brought up in this cancelled thread. I do think that the presence of superior talent in one form or another of the artistic pursuits awes those people who don't have such hypertrophied skills. Every human being has an instinctive response to what we call "art" -- there is no civilization that does not produce it, that does not somehow design its buildings and utensils to be pleasing to the eye as well as useful, that does not paint pictures or designs on flat surfaces, that does not form wood or mineral substances into shapes that are not useful in themselves, and that does not produce some sort of musical noise. It's part of being human. So it is natural when someone who is very good at doing one or another of these things -- making designs or music or pretending to be someone else (acting) -- that those of us who have no particularly strong talents in these areas should think that the artistic person must be an all-around superior type of being. But that is not the case at all. What an artist has is a superior talent in one field, and it is often at the price of any other field of endeavor that human beings think is important, such as social relations. That is why so many artists have such crappy personal lives, why so many of them show themselves to be utter idiots when they open their mouths to opine on any other topic but their particular field of expertise, why they don't seem to have a lick of sense when it comes to the smallest everyday tasks. This is of course a simplistic breakdown of the situation, and there are many artists who have fine marriages and manage to make their car payments on time and don't attempt to talk knowledgeably about things they don't understand (such as geopolitical politics) and aren't total creeps to their fans, but they are in the minority, or at least that is what I have come to conclude after years of associating with artists, musicians, and writers.

Update: Here is an example of an actress who has not sacrified her dignity and common sense to the fostering of her "talent." Could this be the start of a trend? One can only hope. (Via Junkyard Blog.)

Communists and Nazis

Tacitus really shook the monkey cage with this post. I'm afraid that some of the leftist commentators who have been engaging in the feces-flinging here will not be moved from their positions no matter how much logic and rational argument is brought to bear. That is because they are not logical and rational about their philosophy: they are religious.

It was and is easy to condemn a racist, exclusivist movement like Nazism. That philosophy, after all, played upon the German peoples' worst instincts, not their best. Their downfall was not merely due to the fact that "oft evil will shall evil mar,"* but to what I think is instinctive knowledge that despite our petty differences we are one. We are very good at overriding our best instincts, of course; but it is so much easier to use our best instincts against us as the communists and their offshoots do than to attempt to make our worst tendencies into virtues the way the Nazis did. Easier, and harder to combat.

The communists and so forth talk a great game about "brotherhood" and "equality." It is very difficult to go against this cant, even when one knows that it is being used falsely in the service of evil. The exclusion methods used by the Nazis were almost childishly simple -- you had to be German to be in the club! It is harder to keep track of what keeps you in the communist, or even leftist club. The definition of what it means to be a "vanguard of the proletariat" as opposed to a "capitalist lackey" is subject to the whims of whatever is fashionable in inner leftist circles. It could be anything: you wore a new jacket to the meeting -- So, comrade, are you hoarding, or did you get that on the black market?; that book on your shelf that was standard accepted literature is suddenly as good as a ticket to the gulag, because the writer fell out of favor; you pissed someone at the last meeting off, and they decided to pull strings...

But this is all being done in the name of The People™. Unfortunately, the good of The People™ is continually being undermined by those pesky actual persons. Few people can stand to be accused of undermining The People™ -- most people want to be known as the Most Altruistic Person on earth. The most horrid accusation to a lot of people is "You're so selfish!" (An accusation I always take as a compliment, but then I am a misanthrope and gush about the "Brotherhood of Man" moves me not at all. The fact that we are all human together is an occasion for irony, not gushy lumps of togetherness-spiel -- but I digress).

Anyway, that is why in the long run communists are more evil than Nazis. It was easy to get rid of openly evil Nazis, but it's going to be nearly impossible to get rid of every purse-lipped, smug-arsed lover of humanity with a copy of Das Kapital and a Free Mumia!/Paul Wellstone For President t-shirt.

*I thought of that quote when I thought of this post but I was going to wait until tomorrow to put this up; but when I opened the book it opened to the page that had that very quote, so I took it as an omen.

A little elf magic

If he thinks the first film had amazing special effects, wait until he gets a load of Gollum.

Rule Britannia

This article is called Why Britain needs more guns. It is on the BBC website. There's nothing like the realization that one's own government no longer seems interested in protecting the actual citizens of the country it is supposed to be governing to clear the cobwebs from one's mind.

(Via lots of people.)

Peace crap

Is that Starbucks cup biodegradable?

Save the Children™

From a fate worse than death: being saved from oppression, torture, and starvation by the US. Because after all, everyone knows that the United States is really Mordor, and any compromise with the Land of Shadows leads to darkness, evil, and slavery! Juan Gato has the breakdown. Remember: the anti-US left wants to save The Children™ -- kind of the way other people collect and "save" butterflies.

A different protest

Meanwhile, in my old home town, quite a different protest was taking place, with a bigger crowd (apparently) than the antiwar nonsense in D.C. I believe the crowd estimate numbers: one, it is a lot warmer in Miami than in Washington; and two, they don't like communists down there, to say the least, and huge, traffic-tying-up protests/celebrations form at the drop of a beret down there (for example, a few years back the Miami Herald reported that Castro had some sort of ailment and his life was in danger; the resulting traffic jam from happy Cubans flocking to the streets in their cars to beep their horns -- a popular local method of celebration -- made me get home from work two hours late).

Syzygy

In other news, while smug, whiny, Communist-led protestors were tromping around the Mall and waving their silly signs, fires in Canberra, Australia destroyed over 400 homes, have killed four people so far, and destroyed much of that city's power and sewage grid. I am only thankful that this past year was one of the wettest we've had for quite some time in Florida. I can still remember the fires of 1998, which caused about a zillion dollars damage. (That was before I moved to this area; I lived in Miami back then, and the smoke came all the way down there until the whole place smelled like Los Angeles on a bad smog day.) Tex, who lives in the area, has updates -- including this amazing picture of darkness at noon with fires burning all too near. It looks like Mount Doom. Tim Blair also has reports.

Whores for Saddam

Hey, peace protesters! Someone wants to thank you for all you've done for him. Congrats! You must be so proud!

Lies, Damn Lies, and Polls

Angie Schultz does a little Googling to uncover the agenda behind a polling group that claims to be unbaised, unlike all those corporate lapdog US hegemonical government stooge polls.

Side note: one of the things she found is a link to "the 25 most censored stories of 2001-2002." I read the article. Apparently now "censored" has come to mean "put on page two, because everyone wanted to read about that boring old World Trade Center fuss instead."

Update: Link to the "25 most censored" fixed.

Rock on

I am suddenly filled with a desire to buy all of Keith Richards' solo work, as well as the entire Rolling Stones back catalogue.

(Via Tim Blair. )

Crap!

Ah, Jebus. Hey, man, you can comment on my blog anytime. Forget your "friend."

Ecce Homo

Culture War! Guest poster Michael L. at 2Blowhards, in a post about the non-artist public's perceptions of the Artist as an ideal conforming to a certain stereotype, made the mistake of using the "D-word" (democracy). This set off the alarm in the underground lair of A.C. Douglas, where humanity's last few remaining works of Art are guarded in a hermetically-sealed, oxygen-free chamber, safe from the polluting eyes of the dreaded Common Man. (Yup -- that Mona Lisa in the Louvre is a cheap reproduction, purchased at Wal-Mart -- the French smuggled the real painting to ACD via submarine and secret railway; now it is safe from the barbarian hordes and their plastic laser swords and collector's cards.) Our intrepid Curator of the Museum of Man lost no time in beaming over to the comments section where he put his mad ninja skilz to work, leaving no hairs unsplit and no sentence unparsed to the very vowels and consonants. Michael attempted to gain points by confessing to "annoyance" at the Common Man's "drug-like" attachment to the Idea of the Artist as a Certain Stereotype, but ACD is having none of it -- he knows a quisling to the Cause when he sees it and he takes no prisoners. Still, the battle rages on. Will the Blowhards succeed in their attempts to let the Common Man eat at the sit-down lunch counter with the Artists? Will ACD ever stop acting like an outtake from Zoolander? Who knows! Stay tuned.

Update: Main Michael at 2Blowhards has put the smack down (see the last comment). Now that's some kung-fu.

Wymyn of Middle-Earth

Here's a rather silly article comparing the female characters in the Lord of the Rings novel to the movie versions'. It was originally in the Orlando Sentinel, which we here like to call the "Slantinel," and is the usual piece of puffery. Some laffs:

It’s a man’s world, this Middle-earth of J. R. R. Tolkien. "Tolkien created an entire world of medieval warriors and feudalistic practices in which women are not only lacking in positions of power but missing altogether," writes Raj Shoan in The Tolkien Archives. "Other than a few notable females, this is a story by a man about men for men." The wizards don’t date. The Urk Hai and other evil goblin soldiers are not of woman born, but built by wizards. And when the decision is made to march off to destroy the "one ring," it is carried out by a fellowship — emphasis on fellow.

You know, I don't wonder that boys and men like to form "He-Man Woman-Hater" clubs where they can get away from yeasty femalisms like this.

Here's another:

With Arwen and Eowyn, an elf and a human who compete for the affections of Aragorn, Tolkien didn’t even put much effort into distinguishing their names.

Funny, I don't have any trouble telling the names apart. Sure, they both have five letters in them and begin with vowels and end with "n." I can only hope this guy hasn't had any girlfriends with similar names. "You called me Ann!" "I did not -- I said Nan!" "You did too!"

I can only imagine the trouble Peter Jackson will have if he ever does try to film The Hobbit. That story has no female characters at all.

Called up

Sgt. Mom's daughter, a Marine, is on her way to Kuwait.

A most excellent smack down

I'm just collecting good stuff from all over. Bigwig has some words of wisdom for some pipsqueak leader of some "militant Islamic" (oh, hahahahaha) group -- Ham Ass, or something -- who has made the usual hyperbolic we're-gonna-kill-all-Americans-and-then-run-over-them-with-cars-and-then-pinch-and-bite-them-and-call-them-names-and-then-we'll-get-mad threats that have been the characteristic "militant Islamic" (oh, hahahahaha) mode of communication ever since rocks were hard. Anyway, read Bigwig's reaction.

Draw me a picture

What Steve says. Sure, it's unfair. So is being blown to smithereens by someone who doesn't like reality.

Oh yeah -- for those who object:

FOTR DVD Easter Eggs

Hey, people with the Fellowship of the Ring extended dvd, this website has instructions on how to find the neat "easter eggs" hidden in the discs. There is the Two Towers trailer (which I notice shows scenes that were not in the theatrical release, so I assume they will appear in the extended release of that film), and an MTV spoof of some sort (I haven't watched it yet).

(Via Silflay Hraka, who also has implemented some sort of trackbacking program to work with Blogspot sites. How'd they do that?)

Florida freeze

Looks like I'm going to have to bring my plants in tonight.

Potluck for Putzes

Christopher Hitchens tries to din some sense into the heads of some Seattle peacenuggets:

There are at least three well-established reasons to favor what is euphemistically termed "regime change" in Iraq. The first is the flouting by Saddam Hussein of every known law on genocide and human rights, which is why the Senate--at the urging of Bill Clinton--passed the Iraq Liberation Act unanimously before George W. Bush had even been nominated. The second is the persistent effort by Saddam's dictatorship to acquire the weapons of genocide: an effort which can and should be thwarted and which was condemned by the United Nations before George W. Bush was even governor of Texas. The third is the continuous involvement by the Iraqi secret police in the international underworld of terror and destabilization. I could write a separate essay on the evidence for this; at the moment I'll just say that it's extremely rash for anybody to discount the evidence that we already possess. (And I shall add that any "peace movement" that even pretends to care for human rights will be very shaken by what will be uncovered when the Saddam Hussein regime falls. Prisons, mass graves, weapon sites... just you wait.)

Something tells me he's not going to have much success. Once Saddam falls and the aforementioned atrocities are exposed to the world, the response of the "Peace Movement" will be to bat their eyelashes and change the subject. I wait for the day when the administration (or some administration) finally turns its attentions on Saudi Arabia. I expect that the peacedinks will be out in force with their "No Blood For Oil!" and "War Kills Children and Other Living Things" signs for the poor, beleaguered Saudis as well.

(Via Gimpysoft)

Knocking Down Stupid Anti-War Arguments 101

Jonah Goldberg is not always the sharpest knife in the drawer (remember the Mark-Twain-favored-censorship brouhaha?), but he was on in this old column of his (from last October): Same Old Tiresome Arguments of War. In the intervening months nothing much has changed: we are still hearing the same old dreary mantras from the same butt-headed people. So this column is a reference for some rebuttals that might at least get the loons out of your face long enough for you to find your car keys. Some highlights:

Re the scary "Arab street":

Maybe Victor Davis Hanson knows the answer, but for the life of me I can't remember the last time the United States was so willing to let an unarmed mob of illiterate malcontents half a world away dictate American foreign policy.

Re the notion that we can't do a thing until the Israelis and the Palestinians hug:

But others, Saddam Hussein for example, subscribe to this view only because if a final settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a necessary precondition for any invasion of Iraq, Saddam can make sure that Iraq is never invaded.

Re the idea that we need "UN approval," as if the UN were, well, God, or someone objective and uninvolved in the grubby doings of this mortal coil:

People who think we must go through the U.N. seem to believe that the U.N. is an objectively neutral or moral institution. In their eyes, getting approval from the U.N. is like getting approval from a judge or a priest. Or, they think the U.N. is where the nations of the world put aside their petty self-interest and do whatever is in the best interests of humanity.

There's only one problem with this. None of the nations in the U.N. — especially the permanent members of the Security Council — are acting on such pure motives. France isn't opposed to invading Iraq out of an abiding love of peace. It's opposed to an American invasion largely because France has been trading with Iraq for years, despite the sanctions. France has billions of dollars in oil contracts it doesn't want to lose.

Re the number one on the Stupid Argument Hit Parade, "No Blood For Oil":

This was all the rage when I was in college during the first Gulf War and it hasn't gotten any better with age. The basic argument goes like this: Bush and Cheney are oil guys. They want to get their grubby hands on Iraq's oil. Ergo, this is a war for oil. I guess it could be stated with more sophistication, but why go to all the trouble of putting a dress on a pig?

Re the ignorance about the rich that is implicit in these arguments:

Every day, I hear from people who honestly think Bush & co. want to invade Iraq to make a few more bucks. These people are either stoopid or they are trapped in a Twilight Zone where Thomas Nast cartoons seem real.

Read the rest, and memorize. I'm sure they will come in handy in the next few months.

Another British blogger in trouble

Now it's Andrew Ian Dodge. What the hell is going on?

Lileks on Le Carré

I said, LILEKS ON LE CARRÉ. What are you waiting for? Go! Go!

No future for you

England's dreaming. No, actually, England's fucked. And France is even worse. Dipnut has much to say. Here's what I say: I'm staying. Right. Here. In Violent, Fascist, Amerikkka, where it is still kind of possible in parts of it to defend yourself from a burglar without having to worry about the judge feeling sorry for the criminal scum and releasing said creep out into the public while throwing your sorry ass in prison for being mean to the downtrodden, where it is quite the rarity for a cop to say to your face that they don't want to report the crime you have just called them for because "it's too much paperwork" and will "retard our careers."

Europe. Home of high culture. Hah.

Bring it to me baby

Well, I had to post a comment to this; a snarky one, of course, because I am the OS (Original Snarkosaurus).

PS: how could I forget? For more on the raging Komments Kontroversy*, go here. For more Is It Snobbery or Is It Autonomy?, go here and then here. (Say, when is the invasion going to start? Hurry, Dubya, the bloggers are starting to eat their young.)

*I could call it the Krazy Komments Kontroversy and make it an Aaagghh! Racism! threefer.

Fired for Blogging

Iain Murray was fired for blogging. That's what his bosses told him anyway. The kicker? His previous boss had no trouble with his blogging.

Don't let them eat cake

It's come to this: faced with their increasing irrelevance and a populace that ignores their heartfelt cries of doom, the idiots of the world have started condemning the availability of low-priced food. Down with abundant food! cries one Magnus Linklater. You really have to read his opening paragraph -- it's a beaut; the rest is mere gilding the lily:

Death to the superstore. Death to its Disney-style architecture, its endless corridors, its cavernous trolleys, its rock-bottom prices, its choice, convenience, and soulless car parks. Above all, death to its sheer, unstoppable success. I do not care whether Morrison, Wal-Mart or Sainsbury’s wins the battle for the Safeway chain, because all of them share one aim, the need to grow bigger and faster and persuade us all to eat more, in order to survive. Instead, all we do is get fatter and sicker. The time has come to curb our appetite for cheap food, not to encourage it.

The following paragraph, wherein he reveals his abject terror at the variety of choices facing him every day at the supermarket, would be hysterically funny if it weren't so pathetic:

Consider this: the big supermarket chains offer us on any one day an average of 30,000 different “lines” to choose from, 30,000 items with which to load our boots and sustain the rapidly expanding girths of our families. Each year, to tempt us to further excess, they have to find some 16,000 new lines, replacing and discarding the old, packaging and presenting the new. Out go yesterday’s kumquats, sweet potato and oven-ready chicken korma, in come vine tomatoes, Mexican persimmon, and three kinds of salsa verde.

The horror! The horror! Something tells me this is Mr. Linklater's roundabout way of getting out of having to do the grocery shopping. But seriously, just what sort of mind is it that says something like "The cut-throat competitiveness of the big food chains means that although we spend less of our income on food than we ever did, we eat far more of it" and means it as a bad thing? We are spending less on food! Oh no! We are eating more! Oh n--- Half a mo'. You're not serious, are you mate?

Oh yes, he is. Here we see the panic of self-proclaimed do-gooders who see the objects of their do-gooding drying up. What sight is guaranteed to open the wallets of all but the hardest-hearted human being? The sight of a starving child. What will happen when these starving children are no longer available, because they've all got access to cheap, abundant food? The wallets will close, and do-gooders will hav