Everyone gets to play in the snow but me

For example: here's some people building a snow-thing in Jerusalem. It's hard to tell what this is exactly; it could be a snow-sheep on its hind legs, or a grouping of several figures. Anyway, one usually thinks of the Mediterranean area as being hot and sunny. I suppose it is, compared to, say, England or Scandinavia. But I rather doubt I'll see that much snow in Florida in my lifetime. (If it ever does snow here, the flakes usually dissolve before they hit the ground, or very soon after. It is usually too dry to snow during our "cold" season. The most we get are freezes, even as far north as the Georgia/Alabama border.)

Via Balagan.

Traitor's Gambit

Oops: there are things the "human shields" apparently didn't think of, such as the possibility that what they are doing really is treason. Sure, that charge has been thrown around many blogs concerning these folks, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be taken seriously. I can only suppose that to the people running off to Baghdad to "protect" the wimmin 'n' kiddies from Big Bad US Bombs the notion of "treason" was either something quaint, belonging to the days of tri-cornered hats when people were "less sophisticated," or that they are so deluded by their utopian, we-are-the-world fantasies that they actually don't know what the words "foreign country" or "enemy" mean anymore. (And they take that as a "strength," when it is actually the mark of a stupidity bordering on madness.) It would be nice if at least some of the leaders of these looney tunes had to go through a big, scary trial for treason, but I am not hopeful that this will actually come to pass. After all, Jane Fonda actually went to North Vietnam and shmoozed with the Viet Cong, and nothing happened to her.

Gathering of the Clowns

Lots of bloggers, myself included, have been moaning about the stupidity and moral vacuity of the "human shield" movement. But it has come to my attention that we are ignoring a prime opportunity here: the possibility that the conglomeration of idiots whose masks were torn off on September the 11th, 2001, are converging (no doubt due to some sub-cellular influence that draws idiots together while leaving people of normal intellectual composition unmoved) into one easily targeted mass. My proof? Deepak Chopra is heading off to Baghdad. Bombs away, I say.

(Via Mrs. du Toit.)

Hatebots

Well, well, sorry if anyone happened upon some obscene comments left by some enema calling itself "killjlo." I have deleted the comments. If "killjlo" didn't spend so much time making protein paintings in his underwear, he'd realize that he can't hide behind a fake name and email.

However, I am not an internet expert. I know how to look up an IP with whois, but beyond that I am stymied. Anyone who can further decipher these results from inputting IP address 207.6.147.104 into the search field at whois feel free to email me at webmistressATspleenvilleDOTcom:

OrgName: TELUS Communications Inc.
OrgID: TACE
Address: #2600 4720 Kingsway Avenue
City: Burnaby
StateProv: BC
PostalCode: V5N-4N2
Country: CA

NetRange: 207.6.0.0 - 207.6.255.255
CIDR: 207.6.0.0/16
NetName: TELUS-207-6-0-0
NetHandle: NET-207-6-0-0-1
Parent: NET-207-0-0-0-0
NetType: Direct Allocation
NameServer: PRI3.DNS.CA.TELUS.COM
NameServer: PRI4.DNS.CA.TELUS.COM
Comment:
RegDate:
Updated: 2002-04-08

TechHandle: PSINET-CA-ARIN
TechName: TELUS Communications Inc.
TechPhone: +1-613-780-2200
TechEmail: swip@swip.ca.telus.com

OrgAbuseHandle: AAT-ARIN
OrgAbuseName: Abuse at TELUS
OrgAbusePhone: +1-604-444-5791
OrgAbuseEmail: abuse@telus.com

OrgTechHandle: IA86-ARIN
OrgTechName: IP Admin, IP
OrgTechPhone: +1-403-503-3800
OrgTechEmail: add-req.tac@telus.com

OrgTechHandle: PSINET-CA-ARIN
OrgTechName: TELUS Communications Inc.
OrgTechPhone: +1-613-780-2200
OrgTechEmail: swip@swip.ca.telus.com

OrgTechHandle: TBOTP-ARIN
OrgTechName: TELUS BC ORG TECH POC
OrgTechPhone: +1-604-444-5791
OrgTechEmail: IPadmin@telus.com

The Failed Afghanistan Democracy

Some of you will remember in the heady days after Clinton was first elected (well, heady for Democrats anyway, and at the time I was one), when suddenly there seemed to be a spate of "failed Clinton presidency" analogies popping up here and there. This would have not been so notable much later in his presidency, or even now; but this was right after he entered office. It became a joke, and Dave Barry regularly referred to "the Failed Clinton Presidency" in his columns. I believe that one of the reasons was the "National Health Care" debacle, which had the interesting effect of uniting two sides, the Right and Left Wings, in mutual distaste. (The Right hated the very idea of any national health-care system, the left hated the fact that health care hadn't immediately become free for all Americans the moment Clinton took his oath of office. I exaggerate only slightly.)

Well, I am seeing something of the same theme running throughout left-of-center commentary on the current state of Afghanistan. It has only been little over a year since the Taliban was kicked out of the country, but already I am seeing reference to "Afghanistan, the Failed Democracy," "Afghanistan, Not So Rosy," "Afghanistan Isn't 100% Fixed Yet So the U.S. Failed!" and "Afghanistan, Where Women Still Can't Drive Naked," and so on. Any article that refers to the return of Afghan refugees to the country, increasing entrepreneurship and other evidence that the people of that country are taking advantage and rebuilding their lives, is counteracted by an article or a comment on how Karzai is still in trouble and doesn't have 100% backing of everyone in Afghanistan, there are excursions by Taliban forces, the women still don't feel comfortable wearing a bikini on the street, and so on. Think I'm exaggerating? Check out the first comment to this post.

It is true that the country is still a mess, and that it will take more than paper and happy words to repair many of the problems there, but it seems to me that all the detractors of people who speak hopefully of Afghanistan's chances are doing something akin to telling someone who's leukemia has just gone onto rescission remission*: "Well, it could come back you know, it's not like you're completely cured, so don't be so happy!"

*Thanks to alert reader mikeski for the correct word. For some reason I couldn't think of it.

People not to piss off

One of those would be Mr. Kim Du Toit. An unfortunate example of today's collegiate system had the audacity to write to Mr. Du Toit. He made two mistakes: 1) he used bad grammar and punctuation; and 2) he wrote something stupid. Then again, he signed himself as a "Sophomore Philosophy and Psychology major," so I am not surprised. The only thing worse is a Humanities major taking an English Writing minor.*

*Like me.

Celebrity Death Match

Ooh, Janeane Garofalo got her ass kicked on Fox and Friends on the Fox News Network. Brian Kilmeade was somewhat -- ah -- less than deferential to the august pronouncements of Ms. Garofalo. It almost makes me wish I had cable teevee so I could have watched this.

(Via Sharon Ferguson.)

Dumb Celebs

Another website dedicated to exposing the stupid celebrities in our midst is up: Dumb Celebs. Bookmark it, add it to your blogroll. I'm sure they won't run out of material!

Pathetic crybabies whine against war

What the hell is Robert Fisk talking about here??? I wasn't even going to bother reading this (I haven't read all the mites of antimight featured in this article either; just look at the freaking headline of the thing for a taste of the idiocy). But I let curiosity lead me. Now my head hurts. Here's why. Fisk says:

I wouldn't say I was part of an anti-war campaign.

Then he goes on to babble about his parents' experience of war and the battlefields they took him to, blah blah blah. I'm not sure how that is supposed to prove he is not antiwar; maybe he got a disapproving phone call from an elderly relative. But then, further down, we get:

What we should be asking ourselves is, what should we have done to prevent this situation? But it's always what shall we do now?

Let me ask this (update: I've put the rest in the extended entry field):

What. The. Fuck. Does. That. Have. To. Do. With. Solving. ANYTHING????

Of course, it doesn't. Every problem in the world that is solved, every trouble spot that is made untroubled, is one less place for Fisk to perform his patented sob-sister act over. It's that much less Exciting Career as a Journalist in the Danger Zone and much more ending his days writing obits for the village weekly. It's all about his career and his fame. I can't explain this blast of antilogic from the antimatter universe any other way.

As for the rest of the saddoes interviewed in the article, they are all of a piece: all stuck in that hide-the-ring-and-never-speak-of-it-again moment in Fellowship of the RIng, never getting to "What can I do." Action is anathema to these jellyfish of the left, fobbing off problems onto someone else and then blaming everyone but themselves for the inevitable disaster. "Make the war go away, Mommy!" A bunch of Fred Dursts, all of them.

(Via Tim Blair.)

More changes

I kind of like how I've redone the front page. Nice, clean, simple. Next project: to redo the Library. And maybe even finish those stories, though I can't remember when I have felt less motivated to do anything. I have been feeling just blah for months, it seems; it's never enough to be labelled a full-blown sickness, but I really don't feel healthy. I am trying to eat better, and force myself to get up every now and then and walk. But I am afraid that my malaise has trashed this semester for me. I might be able to pull a couple of the classes I am taking out of the trash-bin. Friday is the last day to withdraw; one class is going for sure, and maybe two. I think I will be taking some sort of summer semester class this year. I am hoping that there will be classes I can take; last year it was all freshman-year stuff.

Site deletions

I finally deleted the long-neglected phpbb forum, in order to free up some webspace; if anyone has http://spleenville.com/forum/ still bookmarked, that is a broken link. I have saved the entries as html pages, if anyone who posted there in the past still wants their posts for future reference.

No, you aren't going crazy

I just found a picture of Killer Hobbit that I liked better. It's a little more... well, it's bigger.

A win-win situation

Yes! Saddam Hussein vows death before exile:

Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein says he would rather die than leave his country, dismissing recent arguments by U.S. and Arab leaders that he could go into exile to avoid war.

What can I say except: "Happy to oblige!"

(Via cut on the bias: February 2003 Archives)

I hate the Belgians

How come they get a trailer for Return of the King? Grrr.

Then again, this guy could have hallucinated the whole thing. Or just made it up. I trust no one when it comes to movie rumors.

(There's also some other, trivial, political reason to hate the Belgians, but I can't remember what it is. Something to do with how they want to run the EU and turn all of Europe into a Franco-Belgian slave state or something like that. I'm sure there are plenty of articles on Google.)

Iraqis for the war

Iraqis speak out: Instapundit.com has all the links. Summary: they are not too thrilled about war, but they are even less thrilled about the idea that the US might go, "Aw, the peace protestors are right -- we can't drop bombs on the Children™!" and leave them in the lurch again.

Frankly, I can't understand the objections of the antiwar people. They were all about the US righting all its wrongs, and cleaning up its messes, and not abandoning people to fend for themselves. So, we are finally getting around to doing some of this, and suddenly it's the wrong thing to do? Because we can't do it with magic like Harry Potter? Twelve years of paperwork and Official Visits haven't made a dent in Saddam Hussein's arsenal or plan; the only thing that has ever worked are the constant patrols of American warplanes in the no-fly zone. Again: American arms do what bureaucrats can't.

And let me tell you something else: Arabs have been doing the paperwork dance for a lot longer than Europeans have. They practically invented the record-everything-in-triplicate mania that it took centuries for Europe to get around using. Please, I studied this: Bernard Lewis has several volumes out that are nothing but samples of the lists of everything -- every brick, teapot, gold coin, sheet of parchment, and what-have-you -- that were kept back in the days of the strength of the Muslim Empire. And tons more of this stuff is lying around untranslated, probably because it is mind-numbingly boring. (Historians of the 31st century are going to ignore our reams and piles of 1040 forms too.) And these UN and European bureaucrats think they can put one over on Saddam with their multi-digit resolutions and finicky procedures? Give. Me. A. Fucking. Break. It's all a game to him. All I can say is we had better be taking advantage of time by getting our forces in place, not doing the Clintonesque put-it-off-as-long-as-possible shillyshallying.

Why can't we deport these people?

Well, I was going to go to UF and get my master's degree. Suddenly that idea looks very unattractive.

Banned list addition

Bored now. The latest troll to bother this site, "Horatio," has had both his/her IPs banned. So she/he'll just have to find another IP. Which I will ban.

The IPs are: 129.42.208.139, and 32.97.110.142.

Aaand... 32.97.110.70. Moron.

An Immodest Proposal

As a counteraction to the recent "Naked Peace Protests" Michele is pondering a gesture of support for our troops. This gesture is not without historical precedent:

Tradition says that armies already wavering and giving way have been rallied by women who, with earnest entreaties and bosoms laid bare, have vividly represented the horrors of captivity, which the Germans fear with such extreme dread on behalf of their women, that the strongest tie by which a state can be bound is the being required to give, among the number of hostages, maidens of noble birth. They even believe that the sex has a certain sanctity and prescience, and they do not despise their counsels, or make light of their answers. In Vespasian's days we saw Veleda, long regarded by many as a divinity. In former times, too, they venerated Aurinia, and many other women, but not with servile flatteries, or with sham deification. -- Tacitus, Germania.

Noam Chomsky, Depraved Minion of Gibbering Evil

Henceforth, anyone who admits to me that they admire Noam Chomsky for anything whatsoever will be labelled the bearer of monster cooties and will be banished from my blog.

That's

They'll never eat lunch in this town again!

But they don't care: Hollywood Halfwits is a website dedicated to "Hollywood Idiots -- Exposing Celebrity Idiots and Anti-Americans." They've got lots of goodies, of course, and I am sure that there will be more. Via Tim Blair.

Reefer sanity

Kevin Parrott on the question of marijuana. Read it.

Announcement

All right, I have to say something.

I have already made up my mind re: this war. Nothing you say will change MY mind. I have all the information I need. Anyone who comes to these pages could figure that out. If you are looking for a debate, kindly check the link on the left that says "all the blogs," and click on it. (If you are using IE, it will open a side window; other browsers will have a second window open.) There are approximately 400 blogs for you to choose from where you may be able to find someone who is willing to argue over the finer points of Bush vs. Hitler or Bush vs. Saddam or Bush vs. Clinton, or whatever bee you have in your bonnet. I have no interest in getting into it. I do not support this war because of some sycophantic attachment to Bush: I didn't vote for him, so far he has my tentative approval in some but not all of his actions, about the same as Clinton had from me back in the day, and I did vote for him. Wow, that's some partisanship, eh? I'm sorry that my support for the war against Saddam Hussein and the rest of the Islamoloonies out there can't be fit into the slot of "oh, it's just because Bush is president and she has an altar to him in her apartment." You know what? I was all for the Clinton-overseen military actions in Bosnia, Kosovo, and what-have-you. I was supportive of the first Gulf War effort, and one reason I did not vote for Bush Sr. for a second term is because he crapped out on the Iraqis and gave in to the UN, leaving our Current Problem in power.

So trolls, and I mean "Horatio," who think you can fit me into the same sort of tiny little ideological box you live in, give up now. Go away, find some other sandbox to play in. This is my website where I record my thoughts and opinions. If you think they are lacking in "depth," "nuance," or some other deep philosophical bullshit, tough. You aren't paying for my server space or internet connection.

Update: oh yeah, and Horatio? Jacitelli wasn't praising Bush blindly, he was pointing out how the antiwar position the bulk of the "left" has taken is based mainly on partisan Bush-hatred, unlike the position I and others have taken that Saddam Hussein is a menace to our country and the rest of the world whose removal from power is long overdue, it doesn't matter what political party the president belongs to. If you are too dense to get that, then you are probably too stupid to understand anything else I have written; not a surprise.

Different strokes for different folks

Alert Reader Kenneth Summers sent me this article, on the quite different attitude one Miss Sheryl Crow had towards an earlier American military venture. I'm reproducing the entire thing here for posterity:

Singer-turned-anti-war-activist Sheryl Crow deplores President Bush's plans to liberate the people of Iraq, but she was singing a different tune when President Clinton dispatched U.S. forces to Bosnia in the 1990s.

In fact, not only did Crow not protest when Clinton sent U.S. forces to the Balkans, she traveled to the region with then-first lady Hillary Clinton to show her support and joined a USO tour to entertain the troops.

"Once over there I felt extremely patriotic," Crow told USA Today in April 1996. "Here are these people, from 18-year-olds to military veterans, enduring real duress for the cause of peace."

The singer then gushed, "I don't ever want to play for a regular audience again, only military folks who are starving for music."

Crow was so supportive of the Clinton administration's decision to use military force in the Balkans that the Toronto Sun referred to her as "Hillary Clinton['s] sidekick in Bosnia."

The war-protesting songstress even penned a tune about what she saw. Dubbed "Redemption Day," the composition was "an anthem condemning America's apathy toward Bosnia," according to the Albany Times-Union.

I leave you to come to your own conclusions.

The Prisoner

Hey, kiddies, here's a story about a guy who got to stay in an Iraqi prison for fourteen whole years because he sold a roll of film. These prisons are one of the many important Iraqi institutions the war tourists human shields are protecting. Great job, guys! What he went through makes Gitmo look like a Club Med resort. He has a wish for the antiwar protesters:

“I am surprised to hear of all the anti-war demonstrations in the West,” he said. “I wish that the demonstrators could spend just 24 hours in the place I have come from and see the reality of Iraq.

“Fourteen lost years of my life. Nothing but bread for food — darkness, filth, beatings, torture, killings, bitterness and humiliation. I wish they could experience it for just 24 hours.”

Ah, he's just a little emotional. He'll get over it when he realizes that War is Not the Answer. (Don't think about the awful stories of beatings and torture. It's not as bad as, say, an artist in the States getting turned down for an NEA grant. Just think of pleasant things; go to the happy place. Ommmmm....)

(Via Wog Blog.)

Not ready for prime time player

Wow. Charles Austin hasn't watched prime time tv longer than I haven't watched prime time tv. Respect.

(Note: you have to go to the latest Scourge of Richard Cohen, Vol. LXXIX -- Goobloggle is boggled.)

I'm down

Ugh. I'm experiencing one of those ebb tide moments. I feel flat and uninspired. I have total writer's block too, which sucks considering I have an assload of stories to read and annotate and write essays on. But I feel totally drained of all inspiration.

Blech. What to do, what to do...

Extra: you know, it would help if the freakin' internet weren't slow as molasses tonight. What do I pay for cable for? (No, I am not going to go to dsl, I can't afford it.)

Terrible things

Don't support them!

Site business

If the site gets a little wacky, that's because I'm fooling around with it. The main index page will be appearing/disappearing too. Patience...

Update: I tried to install Textpattern, which is in beta. A cute little program, not difficult to install, but I can't get the site index page to show. Sigh.

I'm just fooling around with different blogging software. I am way overdue in setting up a journal for my writing classes, and I've been trying to kick-start myself into doing it by this roundabout method. (I have all sorts of scribbled notes, but I want to put them in some kind of organized form that wasn't boring old Word docs.) Maybe I'll try pMachine. I've got a MySql database that's just sitting there, not getting used properly by the Textpattern software that won't work.

The people's Republic of Oregon

Well, there goes any plans to even visit Oregon, let alone live there. I prefer not to spend my money in tiny versions of Oceania, whenever possible.

Out of the mouths of babes, dept.

Things have gotten really weird when Kid Rock says something sensible:

Kid Rock on musicians pontificating about war in Iraq: "Why is everybody trying to stop the war? George Bush ain't been saying, 'You all, make shitty records.' Politicians and music don't mix. It's like whisky and wine. [Musicians] ought to stay out of it."

Maybe that friend of mine who thinks Kid Rock's stoopid white-boy shtick is just an act is right.

(Via a Joe, in Michele's comments.)

R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A.

America, What's Not To Like? Solonor has collected them all (originally featured on a small victory.)

High dudgeon

Ha ha ha ha ha!

Update: hahahahahahaha!

Peter Jackson on organ donations

Peter Jackson, director of you know what, is finding out some things about his homeland that were apparently an unwelcome surprise. For on thing, there were only 37 organ donators in New Zealand last year. Here's a Middle-Earth parallel that is not so cute:

“There is something Hobbit-like in the ‘she’ll be right’ complacency among most New Zealanders,” said Jackson. “ I was shocked to discover the low level of organ donation in this country as we are all in the position of potentially needing the replacement of a vital organ. This little girl will die, as will others like her, unless we all make an active effort to address this problem.”

And that's not all:

Mr Jackson also urges the Ministry of Health to buy a ‘liver bypass’ machine.

“End-stage liver patients have died, only to have a suitable organ become available shortly afterwards. A bypass machine would buy such patients a bit of extra time.”

He said he was dismayed to learn that New Zealand does not own one of these machines, which, at a cost of $25,000, should be within the Health Ministry’s budget.

“Liver bypass machines are standard health care in every other part of the world, China recently bought 60 of them.”

Hey, here's an idea: you've just directed a couple of movies that has earned you zillions of dollars. Why not check out how much a downpayment for one of those things will be, and donate one to the "Ministry of Health" yourself? Just a thought. Perhaps, now that the scales have seemingly fallen from his eyes, he'll realize that you don't have to wait for the "Ministry of Health" or any other government body to do things, not when you have money. (Though I wonder just how much of his earnings is taken out in taxes.)

Cry me a river

Sez Sheryl Crow: "Whine! Pout! Mewl!"

Backstage at the GRAMMY AWARDS on Sunday night, Sheryl Crow contradicted CBS and GRAMMY officials when she claimed GRAMMY reps called her managemment last week asking her to refrain from making anti-war statements during the Sunday night broadcast.

Assuming this is true, has it not occurred to the woman that her management was trying to save what's left of her reputation?

A web comic novel graphic thingy

I was just surfing around looking for images of Valkyries to use and I came upon this web comic: Ancient Messages. It's a complete web comic book novel graphic thingy. It's deceptively simple. I like it.

Meanwhile, back in the real world

LT SMASH is stationed Somewhere where there are some multilateral goings-on. Like this:

The British aren’t the only allies I’ve run across here, however. I’ve also spotted contingents of Australians, Italians, and Czechs.

And even:

“Canadian?” I said, somewhat surprised.

Check it out.

That's all folks

Well, that was fuckin' boring. I would've preferred a goofy peace protest.

Album o' the year

Who the hell is Norah Jones?

Showstopper

You know, I think that this tribute to all the people the music industry has killed lost would have been improved by a shot of Pete Townsend being dragged off for questioning about his unusual activities on the internet. Oh, did I just type that?

"London Calling" -- anyone who can't sing can do it.

I'm beginning to remember why I don't watch tv.

Sheryl Crow and beyond

Sheryl Crow sure is dull. Strictly bar band stuff. Sorry, I'm not into her stuff. Besides, I have two Heart albums I could listen to instead.

She's wearing a pendant that is a peace sign inside a heart. That's it for peace so far. Oh, we don't get to hear Sheryl speak? Good.

Cindi Lauper just told a lame joke, and Alicia Keys decided to save the night by going right into Best New Artist. (Or as my friends and I used to call it, Best Artist That Will Never Be Heard From Again Because This Award is the Kiss of Death Award -- remember when Milli Vanilli won?)

Eminem on the Grammys

So... what's the big difference? He's sounding and performing like he always does, doing his whiteboy rap shtick.

(Or is it Grammies? Whatever.)

BeeGeeBees

Remember the good old days, when it was cool to hate the fuggin' BeeGees?

N-fuckin-Sync are doing the BeeGees tribute medley. They are currently just finished destroying the only redeemable song the BeeGees ever did, "Lonely Days."

Update: well, they aren't "Stayin' Alive" all that well; in fact, they are dropping like flies. They are down to a Be.

Sucrose intolerant

Jebus, this isn't the Grammies, it's a fargin' episode of Sesame Street. Cute widdle kiddies, a song called (I believe) "Dreams Are Real" and -- oh my ghod -- the ultimate horror...

Singing children.

::BARF::

Weird search entry of the day

What the hell is a "muskegon" and why is someone searching my blog for it?

Grammies

Score! I turned on the Grammies late, and the first sentence I heard from anyone was from Fred Durst (of Limp Bizkit), who said that "this war should go away!" Oh, the profundity!

I actually forgot it was on tonight, and stayed out doing various things. I rather doubt I missed anything. Already the boredom is setting in.

A tribute to the BeeGees?

Rock musicians are starting to rival opera divas in the ego department, with rather less justification: discuss.

An observation: this Target commercial is so annoying it makes me not want to shop at that store any more.

British anti-sex campaign scores

The British government, in a brilliant move, has done something that will guarantee celibate teens by the end of the decade: Government urges under-16s to experiment with oral sex. No, really:

The scheme, which has been pioneered by Exeter University and is backed by the Departments of Health and Education, trains teachers to discuss various pre-sex “stopping points” with under-age teenagers.

It aims to reduce promiscuity by encouraging pupils to discover “levels of intimacy”, including oral sex, instead of full sexual intercourse.

I can't wait for the brochures. And what's next, encouraging Mum and Dad to demonstrate for the kiddies? "This is how we managed to wait until we were married before getting in the family way!"

Britain will be back to "No sex please, we're British," before you know it.

(Via Pdawwg.)

Reality attack

Light slowly struggles to pierce the murk in Robert Fisk's brain. He valiantly manages to hold the fort against the invader, but only just. Is this the beginning of the end? One can only hope.

(Via Tim Blair.)

Ghost stories

Check out these cool gothy flash animations.

(Via Tex.)

Here comes the vaudeville hook

LOL. Check it out.

Stolen from Aaron, the Liberal Slayer. Check out his Celebrity Quisling Report.

The Biased Broadcasting Company

It looks as if those polls showing that 95% of the people in Britain thought America was like Nazi Germany only without the orderly queues were a bit... off. Or at least there are some people in England who are sick of the anti-Americanism that apparently permeates the BBC's current programming.

(Via Craig Ratapia on NZPundit.)

The Deadliest Meme

Max Sawicky, lefty blogger Who Is Better Than You extraordinaire, made a double whammy of a mistake. Not only did he think that it would be insulting to call Glenn Reynolds, Steven Den Beste, Andrew Sullivan, and Charles Johnson "the Four Horsemen of the Ablogalypse" -- something that backfired (see this post for more) -- he gave Jane Galt the oh-she's-just-a-girl male chauvinist treatment more thoroughly than any conservative male ever could. Joanne Jacobs commented here:

I think this four horseman thing is horribly sexist. Sawicky patronizes Jane Galt as stupid but nice, not worthy of the righteous bile of the left. She can be just as ablogalyptic as the lads.

Therefore, I have decided to help out. Therefore, I present to you, the
Furies*, as slightly altered by moi:

(click for larger)

(Joanne Jacobs is the one in the back supporting the wounded figure of Liberalism, Michele is Michele of A Small Victory, and Leftism is the poor sap they are hounding to madness for his grievous assault on Liberalism.)

Via Dailypundit and Sean Kirby. Check out Glenn Reynolds' response too.

*Update: I just realized that I made a mistake there. I had orignally wanted to use a picture of the Three Fates, but I couldn't find one I liked. So I went with the Furies. But when I typed this up, I typed in "The Three Fates" instead of "The Furies."

The Itsy Bitsy Keyboard

You know I am on the verge of buying one of those kiddy keyboards -- one of those gigantor things in bright pink or yellow with the humongous keys. If I had wanted a laptop keyboard with itty bitty little soft keys that were very close together, I'd have bought a freakin' laptop.

Update: turn off computer. Unplug keyboard from back. Take to wall. Smash keyboard against wall. Repeatedly. Until keys fly off everywhere and there are dents in the wall and cat has gone to hide in farthest corner of apartment. Take a deep, satisfied breath.

Don't worry, folks: it's just a fantasy. So far.

What Would Sheryl Do?

Oh, man -- this is going to be hilarious.

Get ready for antiwar protests at tomorrow night's Grammy Awards ceremony.

Despite a report that CBS executives had considered blocking politically outspoken rockers, the network said last night it would not pull the plug on anyone protesting a war against Iraq.

I might even watch it. Me, a bottle of (Aussie, Israeli, or California) wine, and the spectacle of big-headed rock stars making utter fools of themselves on national tv.

Sheryl's gonna be there!

Musician Sheryl Crow, who made headlines when she wore a "War Is Not the Answer" T-shirt at the American Music Awards in January, plans to hand out 300 "No War" buttons tomorrow.

Better make that a fifth of Jack Daniels. Or two.

Hey, I've got an idea! Who wants to get together and have a Grammy Night Blogbash? It's more fun to drink and mock in company.

(Via Scott Chaffin.)

If it's Tuesday, this must be Baghdad

War tourism: the cheapest way to see Iraq. Heck, they'll pay you, lots more than the average Iraqi makes. Well, go on, what are you waiting for? Surely you aren't afraid of a little ridicule? (P.S.: I wonder what "Adra'a Basharia" does mean. Human panty shield? Human diaper?)

E. Nough explains

The pattern seems clear to me too. I am not particularly smart or politically savvy (voted for Clinton twice), yet every time I read about Saddam Hussein's empire-building ambitions, I know exactly what we have to prevent. If Hussein gets his way, we'll be facing a new Soviet Union-like entity, only one on the political equivalent of methamphetamines. I got to see one Evil Empire crumble in my lifetime; I don't really feel like living through the rise of another one. (Those of you passersby who think that Amerikkka is the new Evil Empire can just keep on going.)

As to the mystery of why the administration hasn't spelled this out? I am sure that the reasons are complex. Among them is probably the fact that the reaction of people to this current menace (namely, "What, me worry?") is so much like that of the reaction of people to the rise of You Know Who back in the thirties that Bush probably just doesn't want to deal with the flack. I can't say as I blame him; but sometimes you just gotta lay it on the line, and if people don't like it, tough. (See the comments of one "Just John" to E. Nough's post for a typical dunderheaded response to the question of what more proof do we need:

But I think that we're still missing a triggering event. Iraq would need to actually DO something (currently, not 10-15 years ago) before I would support any kind of invasion.

I am afraid I cut and pasted those words exactly as I found them. I can't really add anything more, except to say that if I had to hear this sort of thing from people day in and day out, I'd give up on ever trying to communicate the urgency of the situation to them too. "But why should we lock the barn door? I say we wait until something happens showing that it is necessary to keep the barn door locked before we lock it..." I certainly hope "Just John" does not treat his finances with the same finicky care.

Anyway, read the whole thing. Know what I think? I think that E. Nough's secret identity is... no, if I told you, I'd have to kill you. ;)

Love Train

Paolo in Italy loves America. Go visit his website and practice your Italian! It will give me a chance to remember all that Italian I took in high school mumble years ago. (Found in the comments on E. Nough's blog.)

Not an idiot

I have made plenty of fun of Bono recently, but it isn't because he's part of the Celebrities Against Icky War Because It Makes Us Uncomfortable brigade. Whatever his faults, he is not about to join the ranks of the Saddamites human shields currently attempting to infest Iraq. Read this article to get his reaction to the carefree assumption by certain members of the FOS* that he would obediently trot over to Baghdad just because they asked him to.

There is an undertone of pique in the article about Bono's apparent refusal to spell out just what his position on the whole Iraq thing is. I have the feeling that he is probably keeping mum about this particular situation because he knows that a large percentage of his fans would spit up nails if he actually told them what he really thinks. He is not a fool about his own career, whatever else he might be foolish about.

*Friends of Saddam.

Doom of the IslamoNazis

After reading this article on the all-female crew of a KC-135 Stratotanker air refueling mission over Afghanistan, I thought this quote was apropos:

'But no living man am I! You look upon a woman. Éowym I am, Éomund's daughter. You stand between me and my lord and kin. Begone, if you be not deathless! For living or dark undead, I will smite you, if you touch him.' -- The Return of the King.

(Via The Imperial Canine.)

Outgunned

Best Self-Defeating Argument Ever: Molly Ivins, eager to score points against the Hated Bush Junta®, decided to take France's side in the current fuss. Her alleged beef: accusations of cowardice against the French are Not Fair, because they lost 100,000 men surrendering to fighting the advancing German forces during WW2. In her zeal to show how Kulcha'ed she is by bragging about her knowledge of French history, she forgot another fact that makes her look like the dumb hick she often tries to pretend to be. Ross Douthat reminds her:

If you want to know what a country that really wanted "to stop Adolf Hitler" might have done, consider Russia, which suffered a far greater defeat in the opening months of Operation Barbarossa, saw its front-line armies smashed to kindling and thousands of square miles of territory overrun, was far more out-manned, out-gunned, out-generaled and out-tanked than the well-armed French -- and then kept fighting, until Hitler was beaten and 6,115,000 Russians were dead. That's what it really means to "stand and fight."

I used to think Ivins was amusing back in the day, but lately she has given me the same feeling so many other pundits and celebs do: they have become bitter and mean, and they have sore loser written all over them. People will root for the underdog, and help a legitimate victim of circumstances, but no one likes a loser.

Adults only

Well, my boss knows my website so I am probably going to have to start cleaning up my language one of these days, but those of you who have no such worries might like Tart Graphics for some elegantly erotic free blog templates. WARNING: these really are adult-only (as the intro page will tell you), so if you are blogging from work, have inquisitive children, or are squeamish about erotica, don't go to that link. I won't be responsible for what happens if you ignore my advice!

I'm not telling you what my favorite was. I can't tell you all my secrets. =^)

Like talking to a wall

Glenn Reynolds has some advice for people against the war. Too bad so few of them will take it.

[self promotion] I noticed that my name is on the list of links on the sidebar. I'd never noticed before. Go me! [/self promotion]

Oil Refinery Explosion in Staten Island

Tim Blair had this entry (and he had it tomorrow!):

SOMETHING BIG is happening in Staten Island. Fire, explosions. No news links yet.

I decided to look around. Sure enough, the New York Times has this report up. There are the usual disclaimers of the "T" word.

Message to Osama

A Muslim writes to Osama bin Laden in response to the latest cobbled together fake taped message:

Shut up, bitch.

(Via Tim Blair)

Attrition

Aaaarrrggghhh!!!

Update: aaahhh.

A Poet Dissents

That's the name of this article, written by poet Frederick Turner. He is for the war, and wonders if this means he's not a poet anymore, considering the apparent attitude of the so-called "poet community." Perhaps instead of poet, we could resurrect the old term "bard" for him then. The poem he ends his article with might not be "good" poetry -- I have too little education in the matter to be able to say whether or not a poem is "good" -- but I liked it; it has a certain Beowulf -like rhythm. (Via Instapundit.)

Email woes

My spleenville.com email is acting weird. If you want to contact me by email, use my regular address, harrisandrea(at)earthlink(dot)net until further notice. You know what to change the stuff in the parentheses to.

Also, I have updated the FAQ.

Who are these people?

Via new Canadian blogger Paul Jané comes this report on the Brit Award Ceremonies. I used to follow the British music scene, but I lost interest some time in the mid-Nineties. I looks as if I haven't missed much.

British pop stars are much exercised about all this scary war talk. Of paramount concern is the mess it will make:

Ms Dynamite - who won best British female artist and best urban act - performed a rewritten version of George Michael's track Faith which said: "I don't want blood on my hands."

Chemical weapons kill without all that messy blood, so perhaps this is why Saddam Hussein's use of them on his own citizens does not seem to upset anti-war activists so much.

They are also extremely worried about Der Bush's plans for them. Apparently word has gotten out about Operation Wrap Party (the Bush Junta's® plan to assassinate uppity celebrities):

Coldplay's Chris Martin, who had earlier joked about how his band were the best in the world - "except for [boy band] Blue" - turned serious when he picked up the best British album award.

"Awards are basically a nonsense and we're all going to die if George Bush has his way, but thanks for these two awards anyway," he told the 5,000-strong crowd.

Serious indeed! Why, the thought of a world without Coldplay's music is just... just... quite frankly it's no different from the thought of the world five minutes ago, before I had ever heard of these people.

Hob-Bit*: Apparently Elijah Wood and Liv Tyler were supposed to present something, or receive something (this report is not at all clear, and I don't really care) but they didn't show up. Hmm... could they have been tipped off?? After all, they've got someone on the inside.

*(Get it? Har! I kill myself.)

Viggo's gonna hate this

Tired of comparing today's situation to World War II? Try this on for size. Sample:

Many of the people protesting war in Mordor agreed with Saruman’s remarks. “Sauron says he’s destroyed his Rings of Mass Destruction (RMD) and that’s good enough for me,” said one fellow carrying a sign that said “Elrond is a Balrog.” Another demonstrator urged, “Give the RMD inspectors more time. There’s no reason to rush to any judgment just because Mount Doom is belching lava, the Dark Tower is rebuilt, and Osgiliath has been decimated.” A third protester piped up, “I haven’t heard a single bit of convincing evidence connecting the Nazgul with Sauron. I think they destroyed Osgiliath on their own initiative without any support from Sauron. Besides, it’s understandable they’re angry with Gondor. We haven’t done nearly as much for the Orcs and Goblins and Easterlings as the Nazgul and Sauron have. It’s understandable they throw their support to them. It’s our own fault really.”

Oh, but you really must read it all.

(Via Asparagirl.)

Note: I decided to change the title -- if any of you read this in the last three seconds.

Interview with the Hobbit

My, MTV.com is an unexpected treasure trove of hobbity stuff. Here's an interview with Dominic Monaghan (Merry) and Billy Boyd (Pippin.) And here's one with Sean Astin.

Update: whoops, forgot to link to this interview with Elijah Wood.

Sam goes to the movies

Sean Astin's favorite movies. On the list: L.A. Confidential (he's seen it "37 times"), The Lost Boys, Patton.

Tiny Bean

There's a shrill buzzing sound emitting from New York City. What could it be? Oops -- there went another champagne glass... yes! It's society doyenne and failed magazine editor Tina Brown! Money quote:

IS IT JUST THE RESIDUE of fashion week that makes me wish there were more, or should I say any, gay men in the Bush Administration? At The Sunday Times in the Seventies one top editor used to shake his head when the paper became too humourlessly high-testosterone and say that what it needed that week was “more pooftah power”.

Correct me if I am wrong, but I am practically sure that there is at least one gay person in Bush's administration. I can't remember his name, or -- oh heck, let's use Google: Here's a little item from Newsmax (not a leftwing publication) on the number of gay people Bush has or had appointed to various positions. That Google search took me less than thirty seconds. As Big Arm Woman says, I guess Tina Brown really is a tiny moron.

(Via Juan Gato. Note: I left a version of this post in Big Arm Woman's comments. It actually did take me thirty seconds to find the Newsmax item above, not five minutes. Google is your friend.)

The wages of peace, pt. 2

For the Children™.

Fear Factory

Matt at Overtaken by Events takes on this fearmongering article in the New York Times.

The topic is, of course, our terrified country. The problem is, the country isn't, as Matt points out, particularly terrified. I myself have noticed a disturbing lack of fear and/or nervousness in my locale, even though I live near Disney World, which some think is favorite terrorist target. What can be done to avert this crisis? I know: keep telling everyone how afraid they are! These journalists or whatever they are don't seem to have actually talked to any people other than their close associates. If they had, I can only imagine the dialogue going something like this:

"You're afraid, aren't you?" "Um... no. Should I be?" "Come on, you can tell me! Share your fears." "Well, I was afraid that I forgot to set the vcr for last night's Buffy episode..." "No no, about terrorist attacks." "Terrorists? Bring it on, motherfuckers! I've got a .45 just waiting to be tried out on some raghead--" "No! You're supposed to be afraid!" "Why?"

The headline is "The Worst Defense," but it should really be "Aaagghhh! Mommy!" There's nothing so pathetic as the sight of a terrified newspaper reporter. Also nothing so hilarious.

Update: if I see anything that looks like Al Qaeda riding snowmobiles, I'm not calling Tom Ridge, I'm calling the doctor.

What's so great about the USA?

Tell Michele. It's all about the love, people.

Dead-tree media follies

At UCF we get the local paper "free" (meaning, part of our tuition costs entitle us to use our student ID cards to open the newspaper machines on campus, which do not take coins). But I rarely bother. After all, I don't have a bird, so I don't need any bird-cage liner. And in any case I would not want to expose a vulnerable feathered creature to something as poisonously pinheaded as essays like today's "My Word" column ("My Word" is a column wherein the Orlando Sentinel's editorial page features a local person's opinion).

The title of the column was "Howdy Doody, Where Are You?" That immediately warned me that we were dealing with a Baby Boomer here -- no one from a succeeding generation would know who "Howdy Doody" was, and no one from a preceding generation would care. Here is a sample of the drivel from the keyboard of this flower of the Common People™ (name withheld to protect the sensibilities of her kinfolk):

Americans have been afraid to speak against the president since Sept. 11.

And I am sure you are now quaking in fear of the Black Helicopters® after having this brave missive printed in the local newsrag.

But wait! There's more!

Now we are hearing from more and more citizens who stand firmly against the prospect of war against a country that has not been proven to be a direct threat to our shores. Colin Powell did not convince me that Iraq was involved in the terrorist attacks on our country.

And your expertise in judging what Powell had to say is--?

But wait! There's more!

More and more countries that used to be our greatest allies are, for the first time in decades, lining up to stand against us. Should we not listen to them?

How about, No?

But wait! There is still more!

Are we all letting ourselves be fooled by an administration salivating at the prospect of war?

Yup, they just can't wait to kill! kill! kill! Condi's got a new display shelf all ready for the skulls of Iraqi Children™!

Oh, there is still more...

Were we blinded by the events of Sept. 11 and frightened into thinking that we must appear patriotic at all costs and whatever the president wants is fine by us, even if we are not shown the "cloth" to prove it?

That's an I'm-so-original reference to "The Emperor's New Clothes," the use of which is so rampant that it needs to have it's own law akin to "Godwin's Law" concerning the overuse of Hitler as an argument-stopper.

The next-to-the-last paragraph contains all the sense that was not used in the preceding ones:

We should be pushing for more control of our own borders, focusing more energy on keeping terrorists from entering the country and weeding out those already here with plans for another attack on one of our cities. If Iraq has the technology to send a nuclear weapon on its way to the United States, we have better technology to intercept it. What we cannot seem to control are those who might be developing the weapons within the country to use against us. We would feel a lot more comfortable and safe if the monies funding a war would be funneled into our new homeland security efforts. This writer does not pretend to have the answer to world peace.

At least she admits her ignorance. I like, though, her childish faith in our "better technology" that will somehow be able to magically "intercept" Iraqi nukes that are on their way towards us. I can only assume she means the much-mocked "Star Wars" missile system, though something tells me that when that subject comes up she is against it too. And what does she imagine will happen when a nuclear missile is intercepted by one of ours? That they will both turn into candy floss? I do think that one of the things we are trying to avoid is having any nuclear explosions happen anywhere.

Also, I love the way she is A-OK with stepping up "Homeland Security." I wonder though, if she has really thought through what this entails. Is she for national ID cards? How about racially-profiling people of "Middle-Eastern appearance"? The tone of her writing has a leftist slant -- right-wing antiwar activists tend to not care much about the opinions of "our greatest allies" or any other set of foreigners. But I have read other left-ish leaning people say the same thing about "beefing up" security within the US, while almost in the same breath complaining about "Big Brother" and the "destruction of the Constitution" and so on. Sort of like the way she claims that we are all terrified to speak out against Der Bush, but also says we need to have "more control over our borders" and "weed out" terrorists.

And the newspapers wonder why their readership is dwindling.

Clichés come to life, Pt. 9864

The fucking hell?

Alexandra Vodjanikowa, Miss Germany, has announced that she will travel to Iraq, hoping for a date with Saddam Hussein.

Ostensibly it's to "talk him into disarming." Honey, you ain't that good-looking.

Via Power Line, via the Legal Bean

die, trend, die

No, I will not call them "freedom fries." Yeesh.

Why can't we do what the Brits do, and just call them "chips"?

Girls just wanna have fun

Via Steven Chapman we have

Lesbian Japanese Monkeys

Click the picture:

Wild kingdom

Tonight's episode comes from Down Under, and is brought to you by James Morrow, an American currently held captive residing in Sydney. Here he has a couple of shots of Oz's version of the possum. And here is a feature on the elusive Tim Blair, shown emerging from his native burrow to forage in the wild.

Are you ready?

Well, the website is.

(Via the Last Page.)

The wages of peace marches

Are making the enemy think we are pansies who can't take a little conflict. Or did the pro Saddam antiwar protesters ever consider the possibility that their activities might have this effect on Saddam Hussein instead of turning him into a latter-day Gandhi?

Something tells me "no."

(Via The Weekly James.)

Instapundit is the Borg!

You will be assimilated! Heh heh.

And guess what, he says something in this column that underscores what I said in my post below :

It's been forgotten now, but in October 2001, the media was full of dark predictions about a "quagmire" in Afghanistan, and claims that there wasn't enough "proof" that Osama bin Laden was behind the attacks. Noam Chomsky was claiming that the US was planning a "silent genocide" in which millions of Afghans would starve to death as a result of war, and humanitarian groups were more or less echoing his predictions. Meanwhile we were told that the Afghans, natural warriors, would pick off American troops by the thousand, and Muslims across the world would rise as one, plunging the planet into conflict.

Uh huh. That's why I and many others are wondering about the condition of the "peace" activists when much of their current blathering seems to be from a template with the word "Afghanistan" replaced by the word "Iraq."

Divided by a common language

Sometimes I wonder what we mean by "dialogue." I keep reading that "we need to have a dialogue!" concerning this possible war with Iraq, but I am not sure why. Everyone seems to have already made up their mind; I know I have. "Dialogue" seems to result instead in frustrating exchanges like the one in the comments to one of my posts. I have come to the attentions of one Colin Roald, who has his own blog, though it seems to be down right now (it was up earlier this afternoon).

Anyway, I found the exchange exasperating. Mr. Roald seems to be coming from an isolationist, or perhaps defeatist (in the "since we can't go/aren't going after all the evils in the world all at once, we shouldn't do anything" mode) position. Now I say "seems to be," because he became put out when I made a statement on what I thought he believed about something based on what he wrote in my comments. Now, I do not know Mr. Roald, nor can I get onto his webpage to scan it until I find a statement of his beliefs -- and in any case, what is the use of writing and engaging in "dialogue" if it is not to showcase one's beliefs? But he did not become snippy because I got his beliefs wrong, he was upset that I had attempted to say anything whatsoever about his beliefs. If he didn't want me to try to figure out what he believed, then what was all that writing for, a typing exercise?

Here is an example of what I mean: in one of the comments here, Mr. Roald says: "[...]things are maybe not so cheery in Afghanistan as you assume " (emphasis mine) and quotes from a news report from this Afghan-focused (and perhaps produced, though I can't find a masthead) website to emphasize, I guess, his own gloomy prognosis for that area. Now I would like to know just how he assumes I or my commenters have decided that things in Afghanistan are "cheery." One of the commenters merely said something to the effect that predictions of a Vietnam-like quagmire for US forces in that country have not come to pass. No one tried to pass off the situation in Afghanistan as "cheery" or anything else.

But this is why it is frustrating to have a dialogue with any of these antiwar people. When you point out to them that things they were certain would happen have not come to pass, they change the subject. When you expose their beliefs, they accuse you of abstract wrongs rather than explaining themselves further. And most frustrating of all, they keep writing the same thing over and over, using slightly different arrangements of sentences each time, the new internet version of "shouting" which has replaced all caps. You know, if I disagree with you on something, and you keep repeating it, I'm not going to slip up and say, "You're right," as if we were playing some demented version of "Simon Says."

In their own words

Fine, don't believe what you read on blogs about stale Vietnam-era ideas, ridiculous tinfoil hat conspiracy theories of world domination and oil thievery, and irrational hatred of George W. Bush being the main themes behind the recent "peace" marches. Believe what the "peace" protesters themselves say.

(Note: you'll need a high-bandwidth connection and the latest version of Quicktime.)

ah, nature

'Scuse me folks, I'm going to go wash my car while there is still a little light out. (Note to self: do not park car under tree in neighborhood where people feed the birds and squirrels popcorn and sesame seeds.)

Update: where people feed the birds and squirrels that birdfood that consists of sesame seeds bound together with some sort of sticky, honey-like substance. Jeebus. I'm so glad our furry and feathered friends are getting plenty of fiber in their diets.

Bloogle

Concerning the Google buyout of Blogger, Meryl Yourish has an interesting idea on what it all means.

Poets for the War

Yep, you read that right -- it's a website dedicated to

poets who support and understand President Bush’s policies, the war on terrorism, or the liberation of Iraq from under Saddam Hussein al Tikriti’s crushing heel.

I haven't read any of the poems yet, so I can't say if they are any good, but they have to be better (or at least no worse than) some of the anti-war offerings we have been subjected to lately.

(Via Spiced Sass.)

The last word

Best line on the peace marchers ever:

If it weren’t for the autonomous nervous system, some of these people would die because they’re too stupid to remember to breathe.

I know it's gilding the lily to say "read Lileks today," but -- read Lileks today.

Textile

I have installed the Textile plugin.

It is pretty cool ®.

You can _{take it} ^{from me}!

It sure will save me some keystrokes anyway.

Seeds of Our Demise, the continuing saga

Oh yeah -- I forgot about this juicy nugget. Actually, I am almost sure that Bono and/or the band have been nominated before for this dog and pony show. I hope they don't win. I really don't feel like packing up all my U2 stuff and mailing it to Polygram. For one thing, there's rather a lot of it, and shipping costs are so dear.

(Via Dean's World.)

People with no lives, Pt. 2564

What the fuck? Is Usenet down?

(PS: I refer specifically to the logorrheac rantings of commenters "GT," "Lilly," "jill," "SteveM ," and "ND." Their bitchfestations have to be read to be believed.)

All the lonely tyrants

While reading this article on the life and times of country-boy-done-good Saddam Hussein, I began to envision a new sitcom, along the lines of The Osbournes. Only instead of family squabbles, backstage antics, and dog poop, it would feature assassinations, grandiose speeches, and summary executions. Call it Leader Knows Best, or simply, Al-Khatib.

Time to smack some people upside the head

Hm. It seems that Prince Faisal is not down with this whole invade-Iraq thing:

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal has said that any unilateral military action by the US would appear as an "act of aggression".

Shut up, bitch.

In other news, no-longer-president-but-can't-seem-to-get-over-that-fact Jimmy Cawduh continues to annoy. Now he has signed the UK Mirror's "Not In Our Name" Support Dear Leader Saddam Hussein Anti-War Petition. Message to ex-President Hamster: shut up you goddamn hypocrite.

I need a vacation

I need to go back to New Orleans. Now.

Hobbit World News

Taking a break from peace fools and cybertrolls, here's some news from Middle Earth:

This interview with Billy Boyd reveals that he will be in upcoming high seas adventure film film Master and Commander, with Russell "Ladies' Man" Crowe. Hmm. Watching the British Horatio Hornblower series last year gave me quite the taste for high seas Napoleonic-era adventure movies. (Iaon Gruffudd helped.)

Scroll down on this page to the entry titled "JRD Shoots 'Dragon' In Bulgaria" for news of a film that John Rhys-Davies will be in. Excerpt:

The film is called "Dragon Storms" by director Stephen Foerstein. Filming will take place in the medieval fortress Baba Vida and the dungeons of the "Venetian depot" in Vidin for 18 days. John Rhys-Davies plays the role of the evil king.

For those of you who did not know: Orlando "Legolas! Squeal!" Bloom is going to play Paris in the upcoming film Troy. And Sean Bean (who played Boromir) is cast as Odysseus. Can't wait for that one either.

This interview with Ian McKellan contains the following amusing tidbit:

But, yes, it’s agreeable for a one-time Burnley boy to sit next to Meryl Streep at the Oscars, or have Colin Powell introduce himself as “your mailman” at the same ceremony and drop a missive from his niece into his lap[...]

Smoke 'em if you've got 'em.

The Elijah's World AOL Chat (April 30, 1995)

Lionrobby: Elijah, I've noticed you sign "God Bless You" on autographs, What religion are you?

Guest EJW: lion, I'm Christian
***************
The Prodigy Chat (September 12, 1997)

Question: What are your religious beliefs?

Elijah: Well, I'm a Christian. I was raised a Christian. I'm not highly religious in some people's eyes because I don't go to church. It's not that I've made a choice saying that I do not want to go to church... It's more circumstantial than that. But since our family has not been to church in so long, it's not really something we've considered doing.

I don't feel that in order to be a "good Christian," that you have to go to church. You can be religious without going to church by just praying and living your life for God. And living your life by God's teachings, or the bible. It interesting...every bible for every religion says basically the same thing.

And here's a favorable Christian review of Fellowship of the Ring. However, there is one puzzling note: a "moderate" rating on the film for "drug alert." I can't understand what they mean: are they referring to the "leaf"? Repeat after me, people: "leaf" is just what Tolkien calls "tobacco." It is not cannabis: ignore the hippies.

Error 404

Har!

(Via Kathy Kinslet, via E. Nough. All Hail Blogcest!

Crap, crap, crap, crap

Today I had a deadline to upload a story to my web class. (Advanced Fiction Writing.) I went to upload it. The server is down. Now my story is late.

Crap, crap, crap, crap.

Sour Milk

Tim Blair on the impact of the "peace" marches. Summary: the left is dead.

Most rigged quiz ever

No, really, it is. Go check it out and make sure you look at "see all possible results." Note how Mother Theresa, the staunch anti-abortionist, is the quiz-maker's idea of someone who is "0% Republican." Anyway, here's my result:

How Republican Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Well that's one way to sell CDs

Well. Back when I saw unknown folk singer Jewel open for Peter Murphy (at the Cameo Theater in Miami Beach, sometime in the early 90s) she was just an innocent-looking little thing from Alaska or someplace. My, how we've grown. Now I see why her annoying songs are so popular.

(No really, she's pretty hot in this picture, and I am not the kind of girl who noticed such things.)

Reefer sanity

This is the best mustering of arguments against the War on (Some) Drugs that I have yet seen. Of course, it uses logic vs. emotionalism, so it won't win, but good show anyway. (Via Colby Cosh.)

Grand-père knows best

The US isn't the only country to get the shut-up-you-kids treatment from Wise Older Nation France: here is part of M. Chirac's message to the eastern European nations that have backed the U.S. position on Iraq:

"It is not really responsible behavior," he told a news conference. "It is not well brought-up behavior. They missed a good opportunity to keep quiet."

(Via Juan Gato.)

Banned list update

Now IP address 64.105.100.81 will have to find someone else's comments to troll. I did not put up this blog so snowbound bored high school students could play games.

Update: go ahead, bitch. Keep changing your IP. I'll keep banning you. Tonight's my night off.

A different kind of rally

This might cheer people up some: there was also a Rally for America that was held in Denver yesterday. It's a little different from all the Support Saddam Hussein antiwar rallies that were being held elsewhere. For one thing, there is an unfortunate absence of puppets, clowns on stilts, and people in ugly costumes. So no wonder I haven't heard much about it. Just a bunch of ordinary joes and janes wearing their Sears best and waving a lot of (ugh!) American flags. There is even a sign saying "Pray 4 the USA." They'll never show that on CNN. (If it had said "Goddess hates war" that would have been okay.)

(Via Meryl Yourish.)

Update: Cranky Hermit has more pictures and an entry on this.

I guess I should have used pictures

Okay, what part of "STFU" didn't you understand?

How many times do I have to say it?

Update: I have made this post an extended entry. I figure that I have gotten the message across, even if it didn't penetrate some extra-thick, frozen-brain-containing skulls.

I mean, just how dense are you people? Here. Is the message. AGAIN for those of you who are too FUCKING BRAIN DAMAGED to get it:

If you don't like what you see here, GO AWAY.

NO. DO NOT leave any of your comments. I AM NOT INTERESTED in how I do not measure up to your standards. GET IT??? Just in case the hemp buzz hasn't worn off, I will repeat:

I. AM. NOT. INTERESTED. FUCK OFF.

And no, I will not apologize for cussing on my blog. I have no children and I have no intentions of writing a child-friendly blog.

MT users alert

There's already an upgrade and a bug fix available for version 2.6. Since it's to fix a security bug, you may want to upgrade pronto.

The Opposite of Thought

Of course the anti-war protesters in Tallahassee are particularly stupid. My favorite sign: "Who needs oil? I ride the bus!" And diablogger's perfect comeback: "Apparently the busses (sic) in Tallahassee run on magic pixie dust." Well, so that's why the budget in this state is always in such trouble. Do you have any idea what the price of pixie dust is on the open market?

I haven't done a search for reports of protest rallies in Central Florida. I'm afraid to find out how dumb they were.

(Via the Imperial One, who also has a very interesting How I Switched from Left to Right story.)

That's it I've had it

You know, no one pays me for this blog. Some of you have generously contributed to me through my Paypal link because for some inexplicable reason you enjoy my writing, but otherwise the costs for this come out of my own pocket. But I don't mind -- I have always wanted my own website (well, ever since Algore invented the internet anyway), and to have people read my writing and get something out of it. I thank you all. But I do this primarily for my own benefit, and I am under no illusion that anything I do here is feeding the starving or enlightening the unenlightable. I wouldn't do this if it were a grim duty. That's not how I operate. I don't care about site stats, or Why We Blog discussions, or Changing the Face of Media with blogs, or any of that mishegas. It's by me, for me, and if you enjoy the words I throw up here, great; if they don't satisfy you, then go away and bother some other part of the internet.

See, I had been letting all the nasty backtalk about bloggers by certain other holier-than-thou bloggers get to me. So I came upon yet another of these Bloggers Don't Care arguments, this time from someone I previously thought was reasonable, and I responded to the plea. Unfortunately, instead of sweating for hours over the Perfect Post Guaranteed to Offend No One and Enlighten Everyone (and Just Look At That Shine!) I tossed off a quickie post, because I had to go to work (yes, on Sunday) and I thought that saying something was better than not saying anything at all. So I come back home and open my comments to read that I did not use the Correct Words, and furthermore I have committed the Sin of Stereotyping (every time you do that an African child falls down dead), and therefore I have forfeited my right to complain about British journalists who can't use the phonebook to find a decent restaurant here in the States. In other words me and my clodhopper blog boots have stomped all over (totally arbitrary and imaginary) offended Members of Various African Nationalities All of Whom Differ From One Another Unlike Americans Who Are All Alike.

So. Okay. I'm not worthy. I'm a stupid middle-class bint who shouldn't talk about things she doesn't understand. I get it. Writing it down. Having it tattooed on my forehead so I will never forget the shame.

NOT. Screw this, I'm out of here. I don't have time to devote myself to anyone else's pet cause. I will not be helping anyone "get the word out" about any fucking thing. I left my home town in part to get away from people like that -- people who complained when I helped them do something because I didn't help them the "right" way. Was the help important or wasn't it? Coming from me, I guess it wasn't. So I stopped helping, stopped being an always-criticized doormat, and got called a selfish monster. Fine. I will be what I am.

By the way, I have taken the Paypal link down. Having a "donate" link up does imply some sort of obligation exists between reader and writer, or so it seems to me. I want as little obligation as possible to exist between me and whoever surfs by here. You don't have to read this site, I don't have to write it, everybody is apathetic if they can't be happy.

Meanwhile, back at the abattoir

Gary Farber* links to an article about appalling discoveries of mass graves on (in?) the Ivory Coast. (That's that African country that has been getting the French into some unilateral trouble lately.) I supposed this is another example of just how fubared that entire continent is, in one way or another. I have no solutions, and we can't be everywhere. Perhaps one day there will be a peace march for Africa.

*Main site link; I don't trust Googlespot.

Iraqi Kurds speak

No, they aren't down with the peace marches either. Oh, but who cares what they think? The People (mostly white and upper-middle-class, safe, comfortable, Western people) have spoken. You're off the island, Iraqi Kurds.

(Via the Wog Blogger, who is goodgoodgood, not badbadbad.)

Twice exiled

More evidence that the "peace marches" were nothing more than a huge ego-boost for the protesters and an opportunity to voice resentment against George W. Bush and Americans in general for whatever:

Iraqi exiles don't seem too pleased with the marchers. (Via Dean Esmay.)

Also, via Joanne Jacobs: it looks like the peace demonstrators might actually be emboldening Saddam, and therefore bringing war closer. Good job, guys! Oh well, at least there will be more dead brown children for you to weep over. Always look for the silver lining, right?

I have a prediction: there will be at least one or two things that go wrong that can be directly traced to the actions of these "peace" activists and human shields that will result in more Iraqi deaths than would have otherwise happened; and that this will be denied to the last breath of any "peace" activist involved, no matter how compelling the evidence. (For instance, I can see how all these demonstrators would seem to indicate to a warrior culture the Middle East's that the West is weak and can be easily beaten in a fight; which will result in battle started too soon, or the release of difficult-to-control WMDs, or something like that.) If they ever read anything other than vegan cookbooks, these stupid hippies would realize that their misguided efforts to instill "peace at any price" have caused more deaths than the cholera.

Formatting follies

I am slow -- I just noticed that for some reason italics were not showing up in the comments. I went around frenziedly replacing templates and things, wondering what the heck? and then I realized that for some reason the default allowed formatting code has "em" for italics but no "i." Who the heck uses "em" anymore? So I went and changed the Sanitize settings to use my defaults, if you please. "i" and also "s" (strikeout) are now allowed in comments, though I haven't set up any more handy formatting buttons for the rest of the codes, only "a href," "b," and "i."

Stupid commenter slam

Okay, I'm going through my entries checking to see if any blogroaches had infested any of them. I found one: someone named "Douglas" who left the following immature, nastyass comment in this post:

Okay, so a ship and a gun are just inanimate objects - glad you recognise that even if you do seem to find them oddly attractive. Now stretch your brain cells one stage further and ask yourself: what was this inanimate object created for? What is it's purpose? Why do we have it? The answer is 'To kill people with'. The weapons provide the agency. Honestly, you sound like those morons that promote gun ownership. Long on emotion, short on common sense. You gave it away didn't you, Simberg? "..other inanimate object used in the home - guns." Yes, unfortunately they do get used in the home. Pity. Then again, if they weren't there they couldn't be used. And a fair number of people who have been killed would still be alive.

Imitation of life

Tacitus links to this essay on Peter Singer, by disability activist (and disabled person) Harriet McBryde Johnson. Peter Singer is famous for saying that babies with disabilities should be killed (I can't remember the proper mealy-mouthed academic term at this hour), and in general seems to be a good old-fashioned eugenicist. Some of the commenters in Tacitus' post seem to be missing something about the man, though, having gotten themselves sidetracked on an argument about utilitarianism and the sanctity of life and all that. Tacitus touched on it when he mentioned Arendt's saying about "the banality of evil." Basically Ms. Johnson's theme is how she found herself, to her horror, acknowledging the humanity of Singer and even getting the feeling that he was (at least on the surface) acknowledging her humanity. Of course he is human, I really had no doubts about that; it's only in movies that villanous people with evil ideas are also impolite and nasty to everyone. I turn not to Arendt, who I haven't read more than a few snippets of, but to C.S. Lewis, whose works I have read considerably more of.* Singer displays that common tendency to be found in people who wish to do good in the world: they don't so much wish to solve problems as they come upon them; instead they want to eradicate whatever it is about life that (as they see it) makes these problems arise in the first place. Well, the "root cause" (I might as well use that unpleasant term) of human problems seems to be the unevenness inherent in existence itself. People are all different, their needs and circumstances are all different. These differences rub against each other and often the friction is painful. People like Singer want to end the friction in order to alleviate the occasional pain it causes. The only way to do that is to, in the words of one of Lewis' characters in That Hideous Strength, "make the earth as smooth as a billiard ball." (That's a paraphrase -- I'm too tired to look through the entire book for it.) In Singer's perfect world, there will be no differences, no friction, no pain, and no life.

*Yes, I know that's bad grammar. I don't care. My sinuses ache.

Blog business

Watch out, all you Blogspot bloggers: you've got a new daddy.

(Via Richard Bennett.)

Scared to declare

I have noticed something recently. Some people are uncomfortable using the term "evil" to describe anyone now living; to these people, "evil" is a word used to describe either fictional villains in comic books or movies, or people such as Hitler who once lived but have been safely dead for at least fifty years. So these people seem to have taken to calling evil men such as Saddam Hussein, "assholes." Excuse me if I find that term somewhat inadequate. "Asshole" is not what you call someone who kills disloyal relatives, tortures dissidents' children, and trashes his own country because he wants to be known as a modern-day Haroun al-Rashid. "Asshole" is what you call someone who bumps ahead of you in line at the grocery checkout or cuts you off in traffic.

(Via Instapundit.)

Democracy for Iraq

See the new image to the left? Get it here.

Grocery list

I never thought I would find a reason to go to Disney World again: some group of Israel-haters has this handy list of things and services that they don't want people to buy because they are either made in Israel or their manufacturers haven't joined in on the Jew-bashing. Let's see: I will certainly drink more Coke now, and I've always loved Sarah Lee's products... (writes list).

(Via Dawson Speaks.)

(Note: I rewrote this for clarity, etc.)

Escape to Middle-Earth

In lieu of looking at pictures of idiots and their stupid signs (I'm sorry, but the intellectual level of the antiwar protests as displayed in these photos is on no higher level than "infuriatingly, blockheadedly stupid") I will post some Lord of the Rings tidbits.

First, for all you Billy Boyd (Pippin) fans, here's his diary. It is a very infrequently updated, and rather generic "to the fans" sort of thing, but the latest entry with the missing letters due to a wonky keyboard is promising.* Get that man a wee blog of his own.

Second, the Baltic Blogger finally went to see The Two Towers in Tallinn today. He has the cheering news that they get their Hollywood movies pretty soon after their domestic debut, so we can start on the cultural indoctrination right away. Also, he says they never dub their movies either; subtitles are cheaper. Good, I hate dubbed movies in any language. So if I ever find myself in Estonia and have an urge to see a non-Estonian movie, I won't have had to learn the local language to understand it. (You know Americans don't want to lurn no danged foreign languages. Speak English, world!)**

[GEEK] A couple of minor quibbles with his review: 1) Saruman did not build the tower, the ancient men of Numenor did, back when they had the technical shizzle. It wasn't intended to be a fortress, but a kind of astronomical observatory and (at some point) a place to keep the palantír when they were used by the Numenorians as communications devices, pre-Sauron. Saruman just decided to live there one day after it was left vacant. Also, in the book, the reason the Ents were able to flood the plain around it was because they diverted a bunch of rivers and streams, and dammed up the valley, and one reason for all the water was to put out the fires in the caves underneath Orthanc. This was described in the book as a slow process, and the dam-smashing, sudden flooding scene was not in the book at all; that was made up for the script for dramatic effect; and 2) the fortress of Helm's Deep was considered impregnable because of its outer walls, which were described in the book as sheer, with an overhang, nearly impossible to scale. The builders obviously didn't count on explosives. Once the outer walls were breached, it didn't matter what the door was made of. I don't remember what the doors were made of at the Helm's Deep fortress; I do remember that the gates to the outer wall of Minas Tirith were made of iron and steel, and they were no match for the gate-smashing hammer and the spells of the Captain of the Nazgul during the siege of the battle of the fields of Pelennor. And in that part of the book the only reason the orc forces didn't invade immediately after the gate was smashed was due to the fact that a) Gandalf was in the way, and b) the Rohirrim appeared in the nick of time, and the Captain of the Nazgul unwisely decided to attack them instead. You all know what happened next. Well, all of you who have read the book anyway. I have no idea what Peter Jackson did with this part of the story; we'll all find out in December. Anyway, people with more knowledge of medieval-type warfare than I have feel free to barge in here. [/GEEK]

*Well, I thought it was funny.

**All this is supposed to be only semi-serious. Yes, for some reason I feel like putting up disclaimers for the humor-impaired. Maybe it was sights like this that reminded me that there are so many morons in the world and some of them might visit this blog by mistake and become confused.

Mutton head

Tim Blair (he of the busted permalinks) mocks this article, but he missed something juicy in the very first sentence:

I have to say I am not very keen on American food. A lot of it looks as if someone else has chewed it first. Give me lamb chops, peas and potatoes any day.

Update: or maybe he thinks they came from the Shire:

"What is taters, precious?"

Too weird to not be true

"Sad"? Osama bin Laden's son's name is "Sad"? How... apropos.

Eighties rejects

Best Steyn-line ever:

If you're the sort of person [...] who keeps chanting robotically, ''Yeah, but the U.S. backed Saddam in the '80s" (to which the only response is: ''So what? I liked Bananarama in the '80s'')...

(Via Sean Kirby.)

Same S**t, Every Day

I was tired and planning to go to bed, and then I came upon this essay while reading Scott's blog. The essay, by another Scott, was good, but some of the commenters got on my nth nerve. The same old arguments again are served up as if they were brilliant insights no one had ever thought of before, instead of tedious repetitive queries along the lines of a toddler's unanswerable "why?" Apparently we have no right to ever call anyone else an enemy or fight to defend ourselves because: "America isn't innocent" (no one ever claimed it was); "America was bad in the past and killed a bunch of Indians" (no one has ever denied that either, and what the hell does that have to do with Islamofascist terrorists? They don't give two shits for dead Indians); our use of atomic bombs on Japan was not only inhumane, it was unnecessary overkill (that point is debatable, with good supporting evidence* that any alternatives would have been even worse); we have a "hard on" for Saddam (can we dispense with the disgusting high school gutter talk for once?); we aren't being "told everything" (Well no duh, why don't we just email all our plans to Hussein while we are at it?); "What on earth does Iraq have to do with 9-11?" -- why, nothing at all, 9-11 happened outside time, in a universe of its own, totally apart from the mass of psychic goo that binds the whole rest of the gaiaverse together so that we don't dare move lest we start a hurricane that will smash all the butterfly wings in the world! As I wrote in Scott Chaffin's comments (not the other Scott's, I have no intention of getting into it with yet another set of oblivious fools): I am so sick of these people, they make me want to bang my skull on a stone wall until my head breaks open and my brains spill out. Good thing I have nothing but plaster and drywall around me now.

*Look it up, I am not your goddamn research assistant.

Forget this month

Jesus, what a suck of a month February is. No, this has nothing to do with Valentine's Day, I am utterly indifferent to that holiday and always have been. And nothing is wrong in my life, I'm just fine. But I look around me and see some other people going through some hard times that they don't deserve. That really sucks. Screw you, February.

Does the fun ever start?

I have closed the comments in the old blog for July 2002, and for January 1, 2003 in the new blog. I didn't realize just how many posts I make per day. My plan is to leave comments for blog posts open no longer than thirty days, unless an argument gets out of hand. Ah, site maintenance. It's such a joy.

Update: the comments entry and preview windows now have formatting buttons for bold, italics, and links. Please, people, when putting a link in the comments, use the "url" button to make a link! It's the easy way.

Jesus Christ pose

Dipnut introduces us to one Ben Granby, Peace Activist®. Ben's got a blog. Ben's pseudonym is the name of a nerve gas. Ben's in Baghdad. Ben's worried about health care coverage in case one of the US military's missiles get him (or some irate Iraqi person does first). Ben used to be in a band called Quisling. (Ben thinks that the reign of Vidkun Quisling in Norway was that country's "finest hour.") I tell you, Ben is some kind of freak.

You know what? I think Ben needs to be introduced to this guy. The results would be... interesting.

Disease update

Will this freakin' thing either flare up into the full fever 'n' chills 'n' bodyachessorethroatcoughingsneezingsinusblockage or leave my body already???

The upgrade has landed

Movable Type has released version 2.6. Get it while it's hot. (There was the usual nerve-wracking "did I just overwrite the wrong file?" sweats, but this upgrade went smoother than others have.) And now Sanitize is automatically installed. Here are the new allowed tags (they are the defaults, and the ones people use most anyway): a href, b, br, p, strong, em, ul, li, blockquote. If you want to know how to make them work, here is a good site. I also have the ability to close comments for older entries. That should cut down on the comment wars.

In "Forgotten" Afghanistan

John Weidner has more on the so-called "nothing" that the US is doing in Afghanistan right now.

Contrarianiste

Dear Mr. Soon:

1. No, and who ever said he was? And,
2. He also owned slaves. Your point is?

Music Wizard

Ian McKellan's "desert island disks" are... interesting. They run the gamut from a performance of "The Stars and Stripes Forever" to Abba's "Dancing Queen."

Potty mouths

Ooh, the big, fierce peace protestors are going to throw a huge hissy fit in New York City this Saturday. Or so they claim. For example, Indymedia is calling for, among other things, something called a "mass die-in." You know, in these days I'd be more careful flinging around phrases like "die" if I were these folks, especially if the term "mass" was used in the same sentence.

Sideshow

The first human shields have arrived in Baghdad. I'm saving the whole article, complete with links, here for posterity:

By SAMEER N. YACOUB, Associated Press Writer

BAGHDAD, Iraq - American and European peace activists wrapped their arms around posts on a bridge over the Tigris River on Thursday, symbolizing their intent to act as human shields in any U.S. war on Iraq.

The 14 activists, mostly from Italy, were one of the first groups here using the "shield" title, which suggests they might place their bodies at potential targets to deter bombing. But they acknowledged their mission was only a gesture meant to try to deter an invasion to topple Saddam Hussein (news - web sites).

"I have no intention of being a martyr," Canadian Roberta Taman said. "I'm here because I believe that the world wants peace and that we can achieve peace."

The campaigners, organized as the Iraq Peace Team, have been draping banners over public facilities in Baghdad this week — an electricity station, a water treatment plant and, on Thursday, the Martyrs Bridge over the Tigris. "Bombing This Site Is A War Crime," the banners read.

Dozens of other "human shields" — Europeans and Americans — obtained visas at the Iraqi Embassy in Ankara, Turkey, on Tuesday and were also headed for Iraq, riding in double-decker buses.

"A country that can hardly provide water for its citizens cannot be a threat to the world," Ignacio Cano of Spain said.

Some of the activists charge that the Geneva Conventions governing the practices of war make it a crime to attack facilities essential to civilian life, as the U.S. military did in the 1991 Gulf War (news - web sites) when its bombs knocked out Iraq's electricity system.

Standing on the bridge, Iraq Peace Team leader Kathy Kelly of Chicago said, "You can imagine what this city would be like if it were cut off when some people need desperately to get to a hospital or to connect with the people on the other side."

In New York on Thursday, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan (news - web sites) and the 15 Security Council members were meeting to discuss the potential humanitarian consequences of a war in Iraq.

The U.N. refugee agency said it is concerned about possible shortages of food, drinking water, winterized shelters, sanitation, and other basic services. It says 600,000 Iraqis might flee to neighboring countries if war breaks out.

As peace groups here and around the world readied for marches and rallies Saturday in protest of U.S. war plans, the U.N. arms inspectors in Iraq quietly went about another day's business Thursday.

Among other missions, a U.N. chemical team began the neutralization of mustard gas from 10 artillery shells at the former al-Muthanna chemical weapons installation in the desert northwest of Baghdad.

The 155mm shells, whose complete neutralization is expected to take another two or three days, were the first banned weapons destroyed by the U.N. teams in the new round of inspections that began last Nov. 27. The shells were actually inventoried by previous U.N. inspectors in the 1990s, but were not destroyed before that inspections regime collapsed in 1998.

(Via Tim Blair, February 14, 11:36 AM Aussie time.)

The Odd Couple

Ian Wood has an idea. Hey, I think it will work! [CHEAP SHOT] Tony Shalhoub can play Saddam. [/CHEAP SHOT]

Uncle Sam

Some interesting facts about Sean Astin (a.k.a. Samwise Gamgee). I don't think Mr. Astin will be invited to any of Martin Scorcese's or Spike Lee's parties any time soon. I just get that feeling.

(Via Sharon Ferguson.)

They aren't poets, and they don't know it

James Lileks throws the first shovel of dirt onto modern poetry's grave. About time; that coffin was starting to smell.

(Via Juan Gato.)

Too late to the bandwagon

Sorry, Earth First!er terrorists protesters: this doesn't really work unless you show the picture; and then again, it still doesn't work.

Hollywood backstabbers

Hey! Actors, directors, and other assorted big egos! Not getting enough adulation at home for your mealy-mouthed anti-war blatherings? Go to another country, one that has lately been actively working against your own, and spew there:

New York film director Spike Lee led a chorus of criticism against President Bush at the Berlin Film Festival Wednesday, telling the president he had no moral authority to launch a war against Iraq. Going out of his way to praise the French and German governments for their outspoken resistance to the U.S. government's war moves, Lee said it was an outrage that Bush was ignoring world opinion in his rush to attack Iraq.

"When you think about it, the German and French governments should be commended," Lee said at a news conference after his film "25th Hour," about New York after the Sept. 11 attacks, made its international premiere.

"Too many people are being bowled over by Bush and Tony Blair in Britain. It's ludicrous to expect the whole world to follow what they want. America doesn't have the moral right to tell other people what to do. To say the whole world has to fall into line is you-know-what. I hope more people will rise up."

Lee, famed for his thought-provoking films about New York City, was joined by the cast of "25th Hour" in denouncing Bush. The anti-war comments drew thunderous applause from many of the 300 journalists and followed similar remarks from other U.S. celebrities in Berlin for the annual film festival.

Dustin Hoffman and Martin Scorsese added their voices to a peace movement sweeping Europe, telling audiences in Germany violence would not solve the world's problems and that they wanted to speak out against Bush, without criticizing America.

"I hope the world community will continue to voice itself and apply pressure on the U.S. government," said Edward Norton, who stars in Lee's film. "American citizens have to do it too. It's dismaying to see the unilateralism that the government is doing. They're aren't enough rational steps."

"It's nice being in Europe this week," he added. "Almost everyone in Germany and France is in sync with the governments. I almost forgot what it's like to be proud of my government."

Actress Rosario Dawson added she was frightened by the patriotic mood sweeping the United States.

"Any dissenting opinion is considered unpatriotic," she said. "It makes me upset. I'm embarrassed. It's my hope that Americans won't jump on anyone having a dissenting opinion."

Canadian actor Barry Pepper, who also features in Lee's film, added: "We're going to send our boys and girls overseas to kill -- and that's pretty sad." Hoffman also had some sharp words for Bush at a black-tie Berlinale charity dinner late Tuesday.

"I'm not anti-American but I am against the current administration's policy," Hoffman said to cheers. He said politicians were manipulating public opinion through the media.

"If there is no direct threat why are we invading?" he said.

Scorsese, a director famed for violent gangster films such as "Goodfellas" and whose latest "Gangs of New York" is competing in Berlin for a "Golden Bear" award, hoped war could be averted.

"It seems to me that any sensible person must see that violence does not change the world and if it does, then only temporarily," he said. "There must be people who remember World War II and the Holocaust who can help us get out of this rut."

A long list of Hollywood stars, including Martin Sheen, Sean Penn and Robert Redford, have spoken out against a new Gulf War. More than 100 celebrities have signed an open letter urging Bush to give peace a chance.

(Via A Small Victory.)

The US is mine, and it owes me a living

Ooh, here's a barrel full of fat, smelly fish to shoot: Ted Rall, the inexplicably ubiquitous 'cartoonist' (irony quotes in honor of whoever it was said Rall's drawings looked as if he had stuck a magic marker in his ass and squatted over the paper -- I think it was either Treacher or Lileks [J.L. sez is wasn't him, see the comments -- heck, maybe I said it first ;/] -- 'twas Juan Gato, I am now sure of it, only he used "pencil") is crying crocodile tears over college tuition costs and student loan debt burdens. And guess what he cites as backup for his whinging: a report by the People's Republic of China. Don't believe me? Here's the quote:

College tuition is free or nominal in most industrialized, and many Third World, countries. The United States' insistence that students assume huge debts to pay for their college education is unusual enough that the Chinese government included it in its 2001 report of American human rights violations. (Bolds mine -- A.H..)

There's an equally priceless quote early in the article about an "aspiring cartoonist" who owes $70,000 in student debt. Exqueeze me? Seventy-thousand dollars for a career in drawing cartoons? If I were her parents this twit would be so disowned. I can see the college trajectory now: entered as a poly sci major. Switched to psych when poli sci got too hard -- or vice-versa. Then took a year off to live off her parents and/or travel to Europe/spend time hitching and dumpster-diving around the country. Re-entered college as a "liberal studies" major (degree-speak for "undecided going to college in order to avoid getting a job"). Switches to humanities, then to fine arts, then to journalism. Decides to change majors to creative writing when she decides to be a poet, only to be told that she has run out of major-change options. Stuck in journalism, she adds an art minor to keep from being bored. All this time she is going to an expensive private liberal arts school because she wouldn't be caught dead at a déclassé state uni. Finally graduates, with the resultant debt and no talents to be anything other than a doodler and/or gossip columnist for a small-town free weekly. Has to get second job at Wal-Mart to pay off crushing debt. That is the only way I can think of for someone who is "an aspiring cartoonist" to run up a debt that high.

(Via Dave Tepper.)

You just can't get good help these days

My cat has informed me in no uncertain terms that she does not consider food from the bottom of the bag to be up to her standards.

Caption this

Instapundit gets into the caption contest thing. His comments are open for this one!

Hey man nice shot

Ooh, look at my new desktop wallpaper:

(Click for larger)

Get that and more here. (I have a theory about this scene, which I will expound upon later when I feel like posting more. As far as I am concerned, this shot made the movie for me. When I get The Two Towers on dvd, I will be doing stop-back-replay on this scene quite a bit. Everyone else is like, battle battle battle, or Legolas jumping on the horse, and I'm like, yeah yeah, those are good scenes, but for me it's Nazgul on the bridge. Rock.)

They can balance a bomb on the end of their noses too!

Via Blogatelle, comes this little article: Sea Lions Guard US Ships. No kidding. Guess that dolphin thing didn't work out... (What I heard is, the finned ones became big time movie stars, fame went to their heads, suddenly the US military-supplied chum wasn't good enough -- the same old sad story. Now I hear that the last pair of reconnaisance dolphins are retired, living off Catalina Island in a seedy bungalow. They bicker and fight constantly because of Mr. Dolphin's drinking problem and the habit he has of ogling pretty young female porpoises, which pisses the Mrs. off no end because she has kept her looks, thank you very much. Also, a gig at Sea World fell through (also due to his drinking, though he swears he wasn't the one who pissed in the pool just before Shamu was to swim in). Now he spends his days at the reef, telling any newcomer who happens to swim by tedious stories all about his days doing spy work for the US Navy. It's sad, really.)

This "map" is funny too. I'd say someone has a public relations problem.

Update: here's a map of how we see Europe! Heh heh. And here's one on how the Europeans (well, the French and Germans, anyway) see us. Ah, learning leading to understanding, ain't it wonderful?

Message to Hollywood

Citizens Against Celebrity "Pundits" has a petition you can sign. This is all very well and good, but I have one criticism: it's too wordy. Well, I fancy myself a writer; here is what it would say if I had written it:

(Via Sharon Ferguson and Chris in my comments.)

La Cage aux Folles

Defend France! Or not.

If I had a rocket launcher

They've positioned missile launchers around D.C. you know, just in case. Eeee.

(Via The Gleeful Extremist, whose permalinks are off [the permalink is working now so I fixed the url].)

Update: troops and tanks around Heathrow. Blair is taking no chances. (Via Andrew.)

Eyes opening

Update on this: Rabbi Lerner is starting to see the light, at least a little -- he is speaking out against the anti-Semitism of the Left. (Link to Meryl Yourish's entry because she has all the stuff.)

I'm feelin' mighty low...

Ughhhh.... I thought I had just slept funny but now the weird pain in my shoulder has started to spread everywhere in that general make-your-body-ache flu kind of way, and I'm starting to get that feverish feeling. Oooh, yes, I just loooove that feverish feeling. I have assignments due but the hell I'm going to do them when I feel craptastic.

Wanna see how I feel? Clicky clicky:

Hey, I know: let's have a caption contest! Everyone else does it, why not me.

Déjà vu all over again

I think one of the reasons I find the current antiwar imbroglios to be so frustrating to encounter is the fact that it's happened all before, and within recorded memory. Please read this essay by George Orwell (written, incidentally, when he was thirty-eight years old, only a year and a half younger than I am now), about H.G. Wells and the reaction of that literary celebrity and would-be social engineer to the phenomenon of Hitler, and then turn your attentions to any of the bloviations by the contemporary intellectual elite on the lack of threat posed by Saddam Hussein to the world. I especially like this bit:

A lifelong habit of thought stands between him and an understanding of Hitler’s power.

Mr Wells, like Dickens, belongs to the non-military middle class. The thunder of guns, the jingle of spurs, the catch in the throat when the old flag goes by, leave him manifestly cold. He has an invincible hatred of the fighting, hunting, swashbuckling side of life, symbolised in all his early books by a violent propaganda against horses.

(Via Horsefeathers.)

Update: I snipped the quote -- I needed less of it than I first thought to make my point.

Sublime

Wow.

For no particular reason

Yeah, I kinda know the feeling:

(click for larger)

Dear Viggo

Behold the real Saruman.

(Via Instapundit.)

Expelled

I am very tired today. My sinuses are plugged up and my head feels as if it is stuffed with cotton wool. So I can't think of anything to say that would sufficiently describe what I felt when I came across this article, about a mother who successfully got the word "gun" removed from a spelling test in her daughter's class, because:

Amanda and Mark Sousa, who consider themselves to be pacifists and who are raising their two young children with this governing belief, were shocked when Amanda's spelling list last week included the word gun.

"I realize people hunt in this area, but I still don't think that warrants the teaching of this word to my daughter or any other child," said Mrs. Sousa.
[...]
"I don't think this is an issue of political correctness. It's an issue of protecting your child from violence. Guns are violent. End of story," said Mrs. Sousa.

(Note: look at the response of the commenters at the end of the article. Wow.)

Via Daimnation!.

Immaterial girl

Speaking of useless celebrities who have overstayed their shelf life, there's always Madonna. Russell Wardlow pretty much says it all about her latest attempt to restart her defunct musical career. But his best line so far is from his comments, in reply to another commenter, re the current "peace movement":

And anti-war folks? For most of this episode, Bush couldn't have asked for a more helpful peace movement. The media tried their best to spin it, but eventually even they had to own up to the fact that the anti-war message being currently paraded is dominated by profoundly ugly people saying profoundly stupid things.

Blog of the day

There's so much good on blackbloc that I didn't want to link to just one entry (also, Blogspot, archives, you know the drill). Just start at the fine-toothed fisking of Dave Matthews' pronouncements from on high on Iraq from February 9th, and read down. I myself haven't said anything about this latest pretentious screed from a member of the artistic community, because I have never cared for the Dave Matthews Band's music (one note of one of their songs guarantees I will change the station), and besides, haven't we established that artists -- actors, musicians, the lot of them -- are mostly idiots on this matter?

I am of course old enough to remember Gulf War I quite well. I remember that a lot of musicians came out with "Don't Blow Up Iraqi Children"* ads on MTV, and nothing is more insufferable than seeing rock stars paste on the sincerity. Very few rock stars (I speak of this genre because that was my main preoccupation twelve years ago) can do the sincere thing well (U2 was one of the few bands to have this skill, and even they overused it, and they were out of the picture during GW I). Most should not even try. It just pisses people off.

*I paraphrase. I don't remember the exact nature of the slogans, but they were on that childish level.

Oh what a lovely antiwar protest

Why sleep when I can stay awake and find priceless quotes like this, from "Rajia Dhanjani, a 22-year-old hairdresser from south London," concerning trouble on an anti-war protest trip to Baghdad:

"I thought it would be hard when we got to Baghdad, but I had no idea the trip would be this awful. I thought the journey would be one long party."

Lifetime Channel Overachiever Award Winner

Well, I can't sleep, so I go surfing around, and find a link to this article on Peter Briffa's site (main link to the site -- permalinks are wonky). I knew better, but I followed the link.

MY EYES. AUGHHHH!!!

I dare anyone to go past the very first sentence without being overcome by acute nausea:

Allow me, please, to go all womanly on you: emotional, weepy, unable to stomach one more lie, threat, excuse or justification being put out by our Machiavellian leaders who want this war against Iraq and are damn well going to get it.

Twisted Fools

Please explain to me how this can make sense: Rabbi Lerner edits Tikkun, a leftwing (or liberal anyway) magazine. Rabbi Lerner is against the war. Rabbi Lerner wanted to speak at an anti-war rally sponsored by commie group ANSWER. (Who are about as anti-war as Lenin was, but anyway.) ANSWER said to Rabbi Lerner: "Ew! Stinky Zionist! Begone!" I paraphrase, but the gist of the matter is, since Rabbi Lerner still supports the existence of Israel, though he may criticise it for whatever reason, he is therefore an Eeville Zionist Person and thus he does not get to play any of ANSWER's reindeer games. ANSWER prefers "Muslim clerics" who spout anti-Semitic remarks and lies about Jews being "told to not go to the World Trade Center" on September 11th.

So what does the learned Rabbi do after being shown in no uncertain terms that ANSWER is an anti-Semitic-preferring group? He tells people to go to the rally anyway. E. Nough has the rest of the story on this.

I'm sorry, I'm just not getting these antiwar people. Are they so hungry to have an experience akin to that of anti-war protesters in the Sixties that they will twist logic, deny concrete evidence, and practically bend the very fabric of space-time until they get what they want? How much do you have to hate yourself to do this to yourself? What is wrong with people like this? Is it all the drugs they did back then? This goes beyond self-esteem issues into some really dark area of the human psyche that I don't think I want to know more about. I am only sure of one thing: I want these people and their fans and sycophants to be so humiliated by the truth that they disappear from public life, preferably to the ashrams and monasteries they no doubt yearn to flee to. Please, Jebus, can't you give me this one wish?

The Bored and the Shallow

Oh look, another Indymedia writer is all bored with our silly little obsession over September 11th, terrorists, and such. After all, since nothing bad has happened to her or any of her close circle of friends, then obviously Al Qaeda and their ilk are not a threat, and that mean old Dubya and his posse have brought the world to the brink of nuclear war for no reason at all except sheer meanness and a desire make Joan Smith unhappy! But I thought Saddam didn't have any nukes, or even if he did, he wouldn't use them, or -- excuse me, I have to stop here, my brain refuses to go down such narrow, convoluted pathways. This article best read with Oingo Boingo's "Nothing Bad Ever Happens to Me" playing in the background.

Every time I look around this place
I see them scream but I hear no sound
And the terrible things happen down the road
To someone else that I don't even know.

(Chorus)
Nothing bad ever happens to me
Nothing bad ever happens to me
Nothing bad ever happens to me
Nothing bad ever happens to me
Why should I care? ...

(Via Instapundit.)

American Empire?

Glenn Reynolds looks at America in the Bearded Spock Universe.

(If you don't know what the Bearded Spock Universe refers to, go here. Notice how even in an alternate "mirror" universe Kirk still gets to do it with a miniskirted babe.)

I've invented a new word!

That word is "scrool." It means: the phenomenon of websites that are so wide that a horizontal scrolling bar appears at the bottom of your browser, and you have to move it back and forth to see the content.

And I have just noticed that for some odd reason my blog "scrools." What's that all about... I'm still tweaking. I'll get this thing set up properly some day...

Black is the new black

Oooh, how very goth: scientists have produced the blackest material ever:

The industrial coating for telescopes is one of the darkest and least reflective surfaces on Earth.

By minimising the scatter of stray light, it could improve the vision of telescopes, from amateur instruments to the mighty Hubble.

Several artists are said to be keen to use the new material because it is incredibly beautiful, "like black velvet".

(Via Reflections in D Minor.)

Brave Hollywood

Hollywood is finally coming out and standing tall for a cause they all believe in: money. Yup: war or no war, the Oscars will go on.

Ari Fleischer, Tolkien fan

Scroll down this page to the February 9th entries. Apparently the press secretary everybody loves to hate is a fan of Tolkien, and the Lord of the Rings movies too. This is apropos of nothing, really, but I'm sure it will frost some peoples' shorts. (It's probably from this interview on Fox's After Hours with Cal Thomas show.)

Head like a hole

Yeah, yeah, I'm skipping class today. I woke up to the sound of hammering and sawing (they are remodeling the apartment behind mine -- this apartment complex consists of little four-unit buildings), and my head felt as if it was stuffed with concrete, because my sinuses hate me. Also I am recovering from my usual monthly cramps, which means I feel as if someone has been digging around in my innards with a rusty spoon. (Even More Personal Detail You Probably Did Not Want to Know But I Feel Like Sharing With You 'Cause You're All My Posse: I was briefly on The Pill about two years ago, and they had the pleasant effect of eliminating my cramps and giving me trouble-free periods, but unfortunately they also made me fat and depressed. I am already fat and depressed enough on my own, I don't need the extra helping. Also, they were not covered by my hahafunnypaper insurance plan, and I didn't feel like spending thirty bucks per month on something that made me fat and depressed if cramp free, when I could get cable instead. Also I can't stand all that going to the doctor stuff.)

Anyway, here I am at home instead of at class. Today was Non-Fiction Writing, and I was supposed to go somewhere and listen to a dialogue and type it up for an exercise, but I work all weekend alone in the office, and I wasn't feeling well -- see above -- so I would just go straight home instead of hanging out at Denny's or the bookstore as was my plan. So, no dialogue. I suppose I'll do what I usually do, which is make one up. Later, though -- I am washing clothes, and I have a ton of dishes to do (I've run out of clean spoons to stir my coffee with, and all my mugs are dirty too, so it's time) and I may go for a walk despite the rain. Those are the thrilling details of my day so far.

Most Hated

Look! Buttons for us to wear! (Note: that website and this one are again inflicted with that strange typo or browser bug or whatever it is that turns the word "right" into "left," and now it has a new twist: it turns the word "liberal" into "conservative"! How odd. Isn't there some kind of virus-fix that can help these websites out?)

Via Ipse Dixit.

Gulf War II, the Gathering

Collect all the cards! Hey, at least it's not Yugio.

Movement of the Blogs, Pt. 78454

Steve H. has imbibed the Koolaid and joined the Borg Collective moved his blog up to Movable Type. Now he will be at one with our collective will able to have entries with working permalinks, and a comment program that is not dependant upon avoiding Federation meddling someone's wonky server.

(Hey, who let those aliens in here? What's this thing in my neck? Must... become... one....)

Kheled-zâram

I've added a new Terragen-rendered image to the art gallery.

Still tweaking

Ooh, fadey links. (I got it here by the way. It's easy as pie to implement. Really.)

Fun with the site

Ah, back to the white. And now I have lovely graphical drop-caps instead of line-height dependant ones. I'm still tweaking.

Meanwhile, on the homefront

We're saved! Saved from the man with the baggie of weed! Thank you, DEA, now I can leave my doors unlocked at night!

Seriously, can we please shut down this goofy Fake War Against Some Drugs? Can't we divert the money used for this Ponzi scheme into some more worthy endeavor, like making sure armed men from an enemy country can't just waltz into my state? Hello, Homeland Security? Is this thing on? (Even if I do welcome defectors from Castroland, I would like them to be noticed by someone in law enforcement before they made it to "Key West's main drag." Har har, Herald writer, no pun intended, I'm so sure.)

Wait for the big kaboom

Oh, this is just great: Tons of boric acid hijacked in SoCal.

LOS ANGELES, Feb. 7 (UPI) -- Law enforcement agencies in the Los Angeles area were on alert Friday night for a stolen truck hauling 44,000 pounds of boric acid, a material that can be used as an ingredient in explosives.

(Via Blogmonger.)

Jumping to conclusions

That's what a lot of bloggers have been doing, according to Letter from Gotham. The issue is this anti-war group, United For Peace and Justice, which wants to hold a peace march. The story being spread around is that they have been denied permission to hold a protest and therefore their First Amendment rights are being trampled on. As you will see if you read the actual complaint, that is not so. I had read about this earlier, and it seemed as if there was something missing from the story. Now I know what it was. Details, baby, details.

(Via Instapundit.)

More hell

This post is notable not for its subject matter but for engendering the Best Comment Ever:

BURT REYNOLDS BURT REYNOLDS BURT REYNOLDS BURT REYNOLDS BURT REYNOLDS BURT REYNOLDS BURT REYNOLDS BURT REYNOLDS BURT REYNOLDS BURT REYNOLDS BURT REYNOLDS BURT REYNOLDS BURT REYNOLDS BURT REYNOLDS BURT REYNOLDS BURT REYNOLDS BURT REYNOLDS

Color me some other color

I'm already sick of this green thingy. I'm going to try to work on the site at some point today, maybe I'll even (gasp!) have it skinnable, eventually. Stay tuned.

A blogger to the rescue

Michele at A Small Victory, noticing that many of her commenters have a tendency to type a great many words that say the same boring, pointless thing over and over, which as we all know can lead to repetitive stress syndrome, has come up with a way to help. Now who says members of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy don't have hearts?

Stinking up the meme pool

These clams are making a difference.

(Via Gary Farber. How do people find these things? I can't even imagine looking for them, let alone finding them.)

History rewrite attempt no. 4785

Matt Welch find a snide little bit of business over at the Guardian. One Jonathan Steele opines that:

The crisis over Iraq shows how the US will attempt to manipulate the latest adherents to the EU, the countries of central and south-eastern Europe. Nations that were once the vassals of the Soviet Union are now in danger of becoming vassals of the US. In addition to the three former members of the Warsaw pact which signed the "gang of eight" letter, on Wednesday a new group, a "gang of 10" - consisting of the three Baltic states, plus Albania, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia and Macedonia - issued a strong statement of support for the US over Iraq.

In 1989 there were those who thought these newly liberated countries would be bastions of new thinking. But the west was an attractive-looking club and they were anxious to join the winning side in the cold war. While the EU insisted on a slow and complex process of economically painful adjustment, joining Nato was relatively easy and the US used a mix of fear, flattery and economic incentives to get them to sign up.

Side note: one of the commenters to Mr. Welch's post keeps spouting the "America forgets about everyone it promises to help, look at Afghanistan" line, and it is beginning to cheese me off. No, it has cheesed me off. Let's review:

Afghanistan is not like a corner of Idaho or Maine, we cannot transform the country into a prosperous, self-sufficient nation -- hell, even plain old self-sufficiency would do -- in the space of less than two years, all by our lonesome. As a matter of fact, we have not abandoned the place, as a random Googling will show. But for some reason the fact that there aren't hourly features on that country on CNN means that Afghanistan has been "forgotten" by some entity known as "America." Well. What is meant by "America" in this context? Does it mean the guy at the corner grocery, the taxicab driver, the newsstand guy, the hot dog stand guy -- or, to pick some examples from parts of America other than New York City, does it mean the teacher, the baker, the comic book maker? Or does it mean to be a complaint that the president is not calling me, personally, every day to brief me on the day-in-day-out plans for every thing and every place the US is currently involved in? Let me bring you up to date on something: there is nary a country on the planet that the US is not doing something with, for, or to, and there is no way to compress news of all these activities into an hour-long press conference. Most of these activities are deadly dull, and a report of them would put you, the Concerned Average Citizen, to sleep faster than a Quaalude and vodka cocktail. Let's be real here: when people say "America has abandoned (insert country it was spectacularly doing something to or for last week)," we really mean, "America has been doing a lot of tedious, detail-oriented, time-consuming stuff that is slow to show results in (insert country) but it's too boring to talk about."

I have some advice for those of you who are sitting on your butts grousing about how "America forgets" everything, like an absent-minded housewife who keeps losing her car keys. TURN OFF THE GODDAMN TV. Try using this internet thing, just like I did up there. If you hate Google, there are other search engines. If you hate the internet (then how are you reading this? Liar.) then go to the fricken' library. I'd suggest checking out one of the large university libraries if it is possible; they have meatier stuff, like reams upon reams of boring statistics, charts, and reports like "PERIODIC REPORT ON THE NATIONAL EMERGENCY WITH RESPECT TO IRAQ... HOUSE DOCUMENT 107-179... 107TH CONGRESS, 2D SESSION." I mean, if you really want to know stuff and aren't just talking out of your ass in order to prove how hip and cynical you are about Dubya and the Repugnicans.

And please, please use some common sense: do you think that this nation, for better or worse, got into the position of power it is in today by forgetting any damn thing? If so, you have been h4X0rd and are now OWNED.

Update: a commentary from someone who currently lives in Bulgaria.

Blog walk

Take yourself on a blog walk, courtesy of Kevin Parrott. (And thanks for the linky love!)

Geeks Are Hot

That's right, you read that correctly: go to GeekStud Magazine and find out why you're gonna have to be a geek to get laid from now on! Take that, Brad "So Over" Pitt!

(Via .em, who likes Elijah Wood, who gets to be an honorary Geek for playing a hobbit.)

Jest a minute

Remember this clever Photohopped image? (Click to see it larger.)

The joke of this bit of computer imagery is, of course, that Bush is the real Dark Lord. Well, in the novel Lord of the Rings, the one character that can put on the ring and not disappear is Tom Bombadil. The ring has no power over Bombadil, the text implies, not so much because he is more powerful than Sauron but because he has no ambition for power for himself. This character was written out of the movie because of time and continuity constraints, so many people laughing at this joke won't have thought of this. (I didn't think of it until yesterday, and I have read the book almost as many times as Christopher Lee has.) It sort of ruins the joke, though, doesn't it...

Spill the blood, take that cheese

"This really blew my mind, that I, an overfed, long-haired, leaping gnome, could be the star of a Hollywood movie."

Write your own.

Bowling for Oscars

It'll be Oscar time soon, and already the infuration (is that a word? it should be) is starting. Exhibit A: Michael Moore's opus Bowling for Columbine has been nominated for "top screenplay" by the Writer's Guild of America. Funny, I thought a "screenplay" was this thing where you either wrote, or adapted from another work, a bunch of dialogue for different actors to say, along with a bunch of scenes, with the result being, oh, something like this. I didn't think that some guy filming himself going around the country being obnoxious to real people fell under this definition. That goes to show you how little I know of screenwriting, I guess.

Speaking of Fat Mike, I was at my friend's house the other day and we were watching tapes of The Daily Show (he tapes it because he's at work when it's on, and asleep by the time it repeats -- having a small child will do that to you). He had about a week's worth of the show on tape that he hadn't seen yet. The interviewee on the first episode we watched happened to be Mr. Moore himself. Someone had managed to stuff Moore into a halfway-decent looking suit, that even managed to fit his vast bulk (man he has porked out since that TV Nation stuff), and they had hosed off his flop-sweat and scraped the five-o'clock shadow down to a mere mist. In other words, he looked halfway decent and not like one of the scary Mumbling Starers that you encounter at the bus station at dawn. I wonder if the ever-more-distinguished John Stewart had anything to do with getting Moore to spiff up. Anyway, Stewart asked Moore how he was feeling about all his success yadda yadda. Did he feel great about it? Well, fuck me if Moore didn't go into this shoulder-hunching, downcast-eyed, fame-ain't-what-it's-made-out-to-be act. I swear he was actually going to say "I feel humble, Jon," but some last shred of decency in the man stopped him. After this bit, my friend decided life was too short to bother with this fellow, and hit the fast forward button.

Something special

Somethingawful.com has been having fun with Photoshop at Lord of the Ring's expense. (Don't forget to click the "next" arrow at the bottom for more pages.) Here's my favorite. It's subtle, yet cruel, the way a good joke should be. (And you get to take a drink, too!)

Speaking of world domination...

Remember this meme? Well, it's mutated.

Cold molasses

The internet sucks.

This is what hell is like

Oh my f***ing god.

Will this go down the memory hole?

Remember this guy? The one UN inspectors in Iraq allowed Iraqi guards to haul away? Well, his family is asking for help in finding him. However, and perhaps unfortunately, they are asking Amnesty International. I guess you can see by that last sentence that I am not too impressed by AI's current track record in really being able to deal with thug regimes. I can only hope that the publicity this case has already received will help to get the man freed (if he is still in freeable condition, that is), but I don't have much hope. Amnesty International's method of getting results through the inducement of guilt only works on government entities that have not gone into fuck-you-all mode, and I am afraid that for better or worse Hussein has been in that mode for some time now.

(Via Instapundit.)

The Fine Art of Projection

This article by one Mike Hersh is a thorough laundry list of everything leftists fear the most. Sample:

Freedom. Free speech. Free thoughts. Free people. Why? They feel insecure in an uncertain universe.
......
[they] opposed reforms which protect and invigorate capitalism
.....
[...] believe in absurd contradictions, impervious to logic or education.
.....
[...]flock to propagandists
.....
[...]support idiotic, even fatal policies because they place nonsense over knowledge
.....
They brutally suppress anyone who questions authority, and they always obey abusive controllers. They are afraid of their own freedom. They are even more afraid of yours.

(Via the Imperial One.)

The Eye has it

Gordon King reports in my comments to this post that the local bishop where he lives in New Zealand is in come confusion:

Our local Bishop Penny Jamieson wrote a commentary piece the other day where she said that she wasn't sure who would be Sauron, Bush or Saddam.

Hope this helps.

Evil alert

Tacitus has lots of links to various Powell and Iraq's-material-breach issues, including one (in his comments) to this odious essay, wherein the writer opines that (bolds added by me):

A key component of the alleged Iraq-al Qaeda link is based on "detainees tell us…". That claim must be rejected. On December 27 the Washington Post reported U.S. officials acknowledged detainees being beaten, roughed up, threatened with torture by being turned over to officials of countries known to practice even more severe torture. In those circumstances, nothing "a detainee" says can be taken as evidence of truth - people being beaten or tortured will say anything to stop the pain. Similarly, defectors' stories cannot be relied on alone, as they have every legitimate basis for exaggerating their stories and their own involvement in order to guarantee access to protection and asylum.

*Ha ha! Psyched you all out.

From the Reaping What You Sow files

An editor of the SF Chronicle is shocked, yes, shocked at the nastiness and bitterness of his paper's readership:

Several readers have called or written to complain about the selection of letters we have printed about the space shuttle Columbia tragedy.

Where, they asked, was the universal outpouring of grief for the seven brave astronauts and their families? Why were so many of the letters tinged with gratuitous bitterness toward President Bush or otherwise infused with cynicism or conspiracy theories?

Frankly, my colleagues and I were asking the same questions Saturday as we sorted through the several dozen e-mails and faxes that came in after the disastrous breakup of the shuttle on its final descent home.

Argumentum ad cooties

You know, even if most of those who are against the US going to war in Iraq are not doing so merely out of anti-Bush and/or anti-Republican Party spite, that certainly is not the impression other people are getting. To all those who keep lifting the bar for what they'll accept as proof that war is an acceptable solution to Hussein's recalcitrance, I have these counter questions:

• What evidence can you show that will satisfy ME that leaving Hussein alone will not lead to more terrorist deaths in the future?
• What proof do you have that sanctions and inspections are working?
• What proof do you have that backing down from confronting Hussein will not lead to the US finding itself in somewhat the same situation as a bleeding man in a shark pool?

Mad as hell

Rock
ON.

(Wish I'd thought of that domain name.)

Shrink to fit

It's time for the obligatory Lord of the Rings post! But actually, this is just a pointer to an interesting post from The Lazy Pundit on The Two Towers, wherein he makes a wicked comparison between certain of the more mealy-mouthed "antiwar" protestors and the words of Wormtongue in the movie about Eomer's "warmongering." Of course this movie was written long before September 11th, and I doubt Jackson and the scriptwriters changed anything just to show any kind of prowar sentiment; the idea that one must not shrink from fighting if it is necessary certainly is not a notion newly formed after 09-11-2001. And I am certainly not going to jump on the "the situations in LOTR mirror the current crisis" bandwagon. But it is nevertheless ironic that we should find ourselves in a situation that could be compared to that of the Rohirrim, with "open war upon [them]" whether we wish it or not. Because even if we never end up invading Iraq or any other of the places our enemies live, that will not change our enemies' designs against us one iota.

Hey, what happened to my subject? I guess I have other things on my mind besides (never instead of!) Lord of the Rings. But enough of this. Here is another addition to the Frodo Stares, Take a Drink game. Enjoy! And remember, don't drink and hunt orcs. Leave that to the experts.

To a Canadian Aviator Who Died for his Country in France

That's the title of a very good poem by Duncan Campbell Scott, who wrote it back in the days when poetry actually was. Angua posted it in reaction to the Columbia disaster. Here's a sample:

Tossed like a falcon from the hunter's wrist,
A sweeping plunge, a sudden shattering noise,
And thou hast dared, with a long spiral twist,
The elastic stairway to the rising sun.

A belated thank you

Goes to Dave, who created a new button for my site to go with my new greenery. (Right-click and save to your own server.)

Unilateral or Universal?

Well, folks, looks like the United States is all alone in the world -- as long as you don't pay attention to all those other countries behind the curtain.

Quote of the Day

"Condescension is the preserve of the impotent everywhere." -- Greg Sheridan, in the Australian.

(Also via Tim Blair.)

Put your clothes on update

My my -- I had no idea that Australian newspaper websites were allowed to post pictures like this. No wonder Americans are thought of as prudes. That's not fair, though -- we just like our pornography to be kept separate from our idiots.

(Via Tim Blair.)

Irrefutable and Undeniable

How much more evidence do you need?

Update: even more damning evidence!!

Spread the meme

From Jim, to Kevin, to Michele, and now, to me:

Limp Greens

I sure wish I could rant and still be witty the way James Lileks does. But the sort of void-skulled stupidity he takes on here tends to leave me in a barely coherent fury.

How to get on my bad side

You know, I really hate it when someone thinks they can twist my words around and use them to attack me. It makes me go all kinds of crazy. I was just going to reply to the stupid fucker in the comments section of Jane's post, but the thrill has gone out of using other peoples' server space to rant and rave. So here is my reply to one Eric, who has taken the position that he has the right to make a moral judgment on me.

The subject was the decision of UN officials to cover up the Picasso painting "Guernica" that hangs in the UN building. Here is my reply in full to Jane's remark that it must have something to do with the current "Iraq-obsessed atmosphere":

Well, it was the UN that covered up the painting, not the US. I don't know that the "Iraq-obsession" had anything to do with it, unless it was the obsession certain member nations have to not remind anyone that Iraq has waged a whole lot more of the Guernica-style war on its own people than the United States has.

He proceeded in his hectoring entries to accuse me of 1) lacking in "historical/artistic knowledge" (note: I am a Humanities major, and the daughter of a history teacher, not that he could be expected to know that); 2) of "not understanding" the meaning of Picasso's painting -- he then went on to make the astonishing claim that Picasso in his work was objecting to the "means" of war (i.e., dropping bombs from planes on people) and not the "ends"! I do actually believe that Picasso was objecting to both means and ends. Google is a wonderful thing: here is a website devoted to the matter. He also misunderstood what I meant by "Guernica-style attacks": he apparently thought I meant actual strafing and bombing, and was actually trying to compare Iraqi and US ordinance by numbers (which would have been ridiculous since I knew full well we overwhelmed in that area), when I actually meant "callous attacks on defenseless communities for experimental and/or training purposes," which was the reason the Germans attacked Guernica, and which is one of Saddam Hussein's favorite practices. I attempted to explain where Eric had misunderstood me, but he was having none of it, and I was accused of "ridiculous brutality," and of using the "straw man" argument. That is when I decided Mr. Moral Cop could go fuck himself. Here is my statement to him (warning -- lots of shouting and more swearing ahead):

And YOU, Eric, have used the STRAW MAN of UNINTENDED CIVILIAN CASUALTIES inflicted UNINTENTIONALLY by US forces during battles in foreign lands in order to paint me as some kind of brutal beast, when it is Saddam Hussein who DELIBERATELY KILLED AND TORTURED AND IS STILL KILLING AND TORTURING men, women, and cute big-eyed children in his OWN goddamn country. As for bombing, ever heard of the Iran-Iraq war? What about what his forces did in Kuwait? Do you think all they did was sit around in cafés in that country drinking coffee?

You dare to lecture me in morality. You pompous swine. Why don't you come down off your morally superior high horse? UNINTENDED civilian casualties are IN NO WAY the same thing as killing YOUR OWN citizens deliberately with bombings, poisonous gas, and the like. I never said that the United States armed forces never killed any civilians. Unlike you I can understand what I read. Here is what I said: "Iraq has waged a whole lot more of the Guernica-style war on its own people than the United States has." So you claim he has never bombed his own people? Well, what about the Kurds? And the Shi'ites in the south? What about them? Aren't they under his jurisdiction, technically "his own people"? I guess you would say no.

I don't get what your problem is. Are you really so anal-retentive that since Saddam Hussein didn't bomb a specific village using World War 2-era German bomber planes then my statement is an example of "ridiculous brutality"? Are you accusing the United States of deliberately targeting civilians? Is that what you are saying? That we DELIBERATELY bypassed military targets to get at the cute, big-eyed children? If not, then what is it with the manufactured outrage and these accusations of brutality and ignorance towards ME? I know exactly what the Guernica painting was about. I studied it not even one year ago. I know what went on during the Gulf War -- I was twenty-seven years old in 1990. I have friends who fought in it. Don't you EVER lecture me on something I know about and watched happen, and don't you EVER tell me I used the straw man argument when you are the one who started using it from the first with your accusations.

Here, I will break it down so that your tiny brain can understand it:

Civilian casualties in Iraq during Gulf War I caused by US forces = UNINTENTIONAL.

Civilian casualties on people in his own controlled areas caused by Saddam Hussein's forces during various wars and for experimental purposes = INTENTIONAL.

UNINTENTIONAL =/= INTENTIONAL

Got it?

Course of Empire

Matthew Parris is not antiwar because he thinks we will fail -- he is antiwar because he thinks we will win, and that that will be a bad thing. He states it thusly in a single sentence surrounded by white space for effect, just like my teacher taught us last week in my Non-Fiction Writing class:

I am not afraid that this war will fail. I am afraid that it will succeed.

I am afraid that it will prove to be the first in an indefinite series of American interventions. I am afraid that it is the beginning of a new empire: an empire that I am afraid Britain may have little choice but to join.

Jebus forbid we should have to rule over these grousing, whiny other countries and listen one iota more to the din of their complaints than we have to now. We have enough land. We don't need any more. And as much as I support the ideal of encouraging every country in the world to form democratic governments and implement the rule of rational law instead of mindless custom, it is ultimately not our responsibility to force people to a better way of life if they are too benighted and addicted to their own dysfunctional culture to do so. We are certainly not responsible for the self-inflicted miseries of others, and that includes preferring, because they are used to it, the rule of a "strongman" who will "take care of his people" instead of learning to run their own lives. The manuals are freely available, we are not keeping the workings of stable government under lock and key.

We will do the best we can to fix whatever problems in the world we may have caused, within reason. (Meaningless, impossible-to-implement gestures such as signing the Kyoto Treaty are not "within reason.") We will try not to break too many things while we take out as many of the obstacles to ROTW happiness as possible. (And if you think that Saddam Hussein and his thug posse aren't obstacles to the happiness of a lot of the ROTW, then you need to do some catching up.) We will pay attention, of course, to those who have or can hurt us the worst first, and tough titty if you don't like that. But we aren't going to adopt the whole freaking world. We aren't everyody's daddy.

Me, explained

Hey, who gave this guy my dossier?

(Via Reflections in D Minor.)

Love hurts

Lord of the Rings vs. Star Wars, Onion style.

"Lord Of The Rings gave me things Star Wars never could," Janus said. "If it hadn't been for Peter Jackson showing me what a fantasy saga can be, I might have settled for [summer 2002's] Attack Of The Clones as the best I could ever hope for."

I hate people: update

Some assholes in my neighborhood have been setting off fireworks for the past freaking week. Correct me if I am wrong, but Chinese New Year is over with, right? Not to mention, I have not seen any Chinese people in my complex.

I really don't want to move out of this apartment. I like it here. But if the neighbors get any freakier, I am going to start looking for a new place as soon as my lease is up, I swear.

Browser bake-off

If there is to be a contest between browser versions, I am afraid I have to stick with Internet Explorer instead of Mozilla. Why? Well, for one thing, in my MT maintenance site, my formatting buttons are nowhere to be found in Mozilla. Even though I often forget to use them and just hand-code anyway, I like my formatting buttons to be there if I want them. Maybe this bug will be worked out in the next version of MT, but I'm not holding my breath.

Oh yeah: and for some reason, this entry was saved when I entered it using Mozilla, but it would not appear on the blog. I had to re-save it using IE. Weird.

Anti-wargames

Steven Den Beste weighs in on this teapot storm. There is nothing like having your argument demolished by an engineer. He knows where all the stress points are... He goes right to the meat of the thing the Agonist still refuses to acknowledge (AFAIK, I haven't checked up much since I posted my take on the Agonist's declaration):

Sean-Paul thinks he knows what we are risking. He thinks he knows what evil we must do. He reluctantly agrees that war is necessary anyway. Why is it that he has such a hard time accepting the idea that others may also know those things, and also advocate war? Why does he believe he is the only person who can advocate war and remain moral while doing so?

Sublime

Rock on. Kevin McGehee lets loose with some righteous cussing at some blogroaches. Click and drag to highlight for maximum pleasure.

Interview with the Vampire

I came across an account of this interview with Saddam Hussein somewhere earlier today. I thought it was a parody. But I guess not. Sample of the mustachio'd one's words:

Saddam Hussein: You are aware that every major event must encounter some difficulty. On the subject of the inspectors and the resolutions that deal with Iraq you must have been following it and you must have a view and a vision as to whether these resolutions have any basis in international law. Nevertheless the Security Council produced them.

These resolutions - implemented or not - or the motivation behind these resolutions could lead the current situation to the path of peace or war. Therefore it's a critical situation. Let us also remember the unjust suffering of the Iraqi people. For the last thirteen years since the blockade was imposed, you must be aware of the amount of harm that it has caused the Iraqi people, particularly the children and the elderly as a result of the shortage of food and medicine and other aspects of their life. Therefore we are facing a critical situation.

Via On the Third Hand: February 04, 2003.)

Update: this is why I thought the interview was a parody. This article is a parody, but the actual interview was not. My confusion is resolved!

Cruisin' for a bruisin'

The idiotic and counterproductive anti-SUV "movement" continues. Mary at Exit Zero points out something that groups like these would do well to understand: that their antagonistic approach is not winning converts; on the contrary, it is driving people away from their cause (pun not intended).

The ideal vehicle?

I have come to the conclusion that the anti-everything people don't want to "change" anything. If they actually got what they wanted, they would have nothing to react against, and they might have to come up with some stronger justification for their existence than Fighting the Man. Many of these "activists" would lose cushy jobs, prestigious positions, and their place in the pantheon of Concerned Ones. There would be no one to pat them on the back and tell them how wonderful they are; no self-perpetuating cause to shore up a non-career, such as being the ex-wife of a rock star. Good-bye fame, hello "Do you want [non-fattening, non-artery-blocking] fries with that?"

(Link to Bianca Jagger story via Juan Gato.)

What's goin' on

Steven den Beste has the roundup of war preparations.

Downtime

The woods are calling me, people. Gotta go out for a bit. Later.

Bandwagon jumping

Why not -- it's what people seem to think, anyway.

Yes, I am referring to the addition to the banner.

"He's not used them"

Alistair Sims Cooke on appeasement -- of Hitler, that is. One thing the intellectuals are always saying is that "we have to learn from our past mistakes." I think that is what this present administration is trying to do: "Okay, let's pull the tyrant's fangs now instead of waiting for him to build up his arsenal and conquer all of the Middle East the way Hitler conquered Europe." What do the intellectuals say to that? Well, for the most part, it's been "Oh no! We didn't mean for us to learn that lesson!"

(Via Common Sense and Wonder.)

Update: I meant Alistair Cooke, not Sims. A slight short circuit to the brain. Thanks to the alert readers who contacted me about this.

Politically Incorrect Hobbit?

I meant to blog this tidbit about Sean Astin (a.k.a., Samwise the Brave, a.k.a. My Favorite Hobbit -- sure, Frodo is all that, but we all know he wouldn't have gotten anywhere without Sam) joining some President's Council to Help Children Do Something Or Other (read the press release). I remember thinking, "Ah! How nice for a change to see a Hollywood actor not treat the current administration as if it had cooties." Well, it looks like some tiny minds aren't too thrilled with Astin becoming a "tool of the man." And -- horror of horrors -- apparently Astin was in Washington last September 11th for "something concerning this." (Note to Tiny Mind: it was for the ceremony. Oh no! A prayer was said! Release the hounds!) Yeah, I remember how uncool concepts like "patriotism" were when I was a teenager too. Then I grew up.

(Big Arm Woman reminded me of this.)

Update: I wonder if this meeting with a Democrat group will get similar condemnation from the Tiny Minds? So does this person. We'll see.

Put your clothes on

You know, I'm wondering when the first "peace activist" will come up with the clever idea of having his or her arms amputated as a symbolic "disarmament." Come on, guys -- nakedness isn't enough! You need to really disarm yourself to make the protest effective!

War -- what is it good for?

Gimpysoft blogs about N.Z. Bear's cross blog debate proposal between the (we will use these terms in lieu of better ones) anti-war and pro-war folks. Stand Down has responded. What I have noticed about the anti-war and pro-war sides is that the anti-war folks all seem to be worried mostly about the possible future (will the Bush administration establish democracy in Iraq -- which sounds rather as if Democracy was something one could slap on a country like a coat of paint -- or just abandon the place; will millions of civilians be killed; will the Arab street get even angrier and hate us even more; will world opinion think any less of us -- etc.); while the pro-war people are mostly (though not exclusively) concentrating on what is going on right now (with the exception of fears of Hussein being able to build and launch a nuclear weapon at some future time) -- are Iraqis not being tortured and killed right now, is Hussein not a dictator with expansionist aims right now, is he hiding weapons and leading the UN inspection team a merry dance right now.

I am as worried about future ramifications of any action we take as anybody -- except for the "anger of the Arab street" and "world opinion," as if the latter was some monolithic thing anyway -- but a lot of the anti-war people seem to not merely be speculating but to be declaring that their prognostications will come true. There is a similar dislike of uncertainty affecting both groups, but so far the weight of actual present-day evidence is on the pro-war side, or so it seems to my inexpert eyes. When anti-war spokespersons make claims that are based not on fact but on political biases (i.e., George W. Bush is going to war in order to steal all of Iraq's oil resources*, the American military will bomb indiscriminately -- for objections in that vein just look up last year's No War in Afghanistan screeds and replace "Afghanistan" with "Iraq" -- and so on), I am not inclined to take their arguments as seriously.

*Anyone who leaves a "Doesn't he?" comment here will have their comment deleted. I am no longer interested in the "he wants to steal their Oooiiiillll" argument.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

I like this quote that Jack Rich has on his website today:

There is a rank due to the United States, among nations, which will be withheld, if not absolutely lost, by the reputation of weakness. If we desire to avoid insult, we must be able to repel it; if we desire to secure peace, one of the most powerful instruments of our rising prosperity, it must be known that we are at all times ready for war.

I forgot to add: the person quoted was George Washington.

SUVs have their uses

Via Dave Barry comes this argument in favor of SUVs. (It's the animated gif at the top of the page.)

Buffy the Balrog Slayer on Krypton

Uh oh -- Mr. Neil Gaiman has fallen afoul of one of those scourges of the internet: the Reader Who Takes Umbrage at the First Paragraph of a Blog Post, Fan-Fiction Writer Subgenus. (Entry for February 4th.) Apparently Mr. Gaiman mentioned in an earlier post that he doesn't read fan fiction. He went on further, of course, and anyone who read his entire post would have found out that the reason he doesn't read Sandman/Spock/Kirk/Angel slash isn't because he thinks it smells (nor because he thinks fanfic is all slash). But the flood of emailers obviously didn't get that far before the fired up their Outlook Express. Thus:

[...]it also looked like a lot of the people telling me off hadn't even read the whole post, or had just seen other people on other sites quoting the last paragraph, which was then extensively quoted back at me as evidence that: I don't know what I'm talking about; do not understand that people are writing fan-fiction for pleasure, or that fan-fiction is a valid artistic purpose in itself; that I am myself nothing more than a glorified fan writer; that people writing movies and TV shows and comics and books are really writing fan-fiction; that real life is really fan-fiction; that all comics writers are writing fan fiction and what about that time I wrote (insert comics/historical/mythical characters I didn't create here)?; that Shakespeare was writing fan fiction; and that my choice to write fiction that I do not call fan-fiction should not be seen in any way as a reflection on those who wear their fan-fiction proudly. Also if I'd just read some decent Buffy/Smallville/Legolas/Gone With the Wind fan-fiction I wouldn't have been so rude about those who choose to write it.

Just my opinion

A "tizzy." Oh that's nice. And then there is this one, who knows a Blogger's Duty, not to mention the only correct way to show respect. Gosh, I'm so glad there are so many helpful people out there who are ready to help us with all the minutia of life. I can't wait until the Big Internet Fight on the Correct Way to Hang Toilet Paper starts. (Not on my blog though. It's paper over, and any comment to the contrary will be replaced by an obscene limerick about your grandma.)

Book vs. film

Here is an interesting interview with the writers of the Lord of the Rings films, explaining some of the difficulties they had translating the book to the film, the decisions they made, and so on. An interesting fact is given at the end: apparently Phillippa Boyens' next project is an adaptation of Ursula K. LeGuin's Earthsea Trilogy. That's another of my favorites; something to look forward to.

Overcompensating again

Winner of the Flagellant's Whip and Hairshirt Award goes to the writer of this blockheaded critique of Lord of the Rings and its author, and even the author's friends. Apparently the book is full of "occult imagery," Tolkien is to be faulted for not attempting to write a "Christian allegory," the dreaded Satanic game Dungeons and Dragons was all his fault, and C.S. Lewis wasn't Christian enough to suit the writer of this web page. LOTR gets props, though, for not being "as overtly and sympathetically occultic as the Harry Potter series." Silver lining and all that.

(Note: this site has more goodies, such as a page on the "Homosexual Agenda." Hint: it's got nothing to do with passing laws forbidding people to wear white belts and shoes before Memorial Day. And don't miss the Harry Potter problem! Yeah, I can't wait for the fifth book to get here either -- oh, that's not what you meant? Never mind...)

He was only a grocer's slaughterer

The WAPO presents this Saddam-cuddling article without commentary. One must, of course, take the words of "Mrs. Yawo" with a grain of salt, since I am sure that there was an Iraqi government minder present at the interview. Still, I am sure that there are in this country as well as other Western nations plenty of people who would willingly trade the relative uncertainty of our fairly democratic, semi-capitalist lifestyle for the "safety" of life under a ruthless dictator, just so they could bring home bales of food and soap for under a dollar. The way this article is written also makes it seem as if the misfortunes that have beset the once prosperous nation were the result of those Mean People Who Attacked Iraq For No Good Reason, and paints Hussein as a kind papa who only wants to feed his beleagured people, instead of the tyrant who wastes his country's oil revenue trying to become the first nuclear-powered Caliph. Is this what the media pros mean when they talk about "objectivity"?

(Via Juan Gato)

Sulu speaks

To continue with the Star Trek OS theme I seem to be in, here is George Takei's essay on the Columbia disaster.

Popup Blocker

I've installed Popup Blocker, and it's pretty cool, but there is one thing you should know: it will block the MT comments and trackback boxes from opening unless you specifically allow each MT website to always allow popups. To do this just go into your Popup blocker settings and put a check in the box next to the website that you were just prevented from opening a popup window from. (Excuse the garbled syntax -- I'm not sure how to phrase that sentence any better than I just did.) This goes the same for sites where they have links set to open in a new window. I'm sure most users of this program know what I am talking about, but I've had some people complain that they haven't been able to use my comments because of this.

Movin' on up

Ah... nothing like a new computer. I brought it home and turned it on and called Time Warner to relink me. Easy as pie. Of course, now I have to get a new mouse. (Note to self: avoid Logitech.) I'd been wanting to get a new one for ages, ever since the rubber feet came off leaving sticky glue residue all over the bottom of the mouse. (It's one of those optical ones with the wheel.) Now I'm using a plain-jane spare 2-button mouse. Oh well, it will do.

Oh yeah -- and this hard drive is quiet. My old one sounded like a coffee grinder.

Quatloos, anyone?

I've had a few questions on the subject of quatloos; specifically, on what the heck I mean by that. Well, fans of Star Trek OS (the Original Series) would know that it was a reference to classic take-Kirk's-shirt-off-and-beat-him-up episode "The Gamesters of Triskelion."

"All right, which one of you is Spock's brain?"

Another one has been assimilated

Clubbeaux is the latest blogger to flee Blogspot for the warm, happy haven of his own domain and Movable Type.

Headed off at the pass

You know, one day I should really learn to use this copy of Photoshop 5 that I have owned for about four years now. I can't seem to figure out how to make a header that is transparent-background gif with a bevelled, embossed font, aaargh... I should have used Steve H.'s Naked Hippy Font, but it doesn't go with my new Killer Hobbit motif. Oh well. Perhaps if I ever learn to skin the site, I'll make a Stupid Naked Antiwar Protestor skin. Skin -- get it? Heh heh heh.

I really shouldn't drink so much coffee this late.

I really hope my new computer gets delivered tomorrow.

I just realized I used the wrong version of "too." Kill kill kill--!

Update: there, dammit.

The things I keep

I told you I used to collect stamps. I still have most of my collection, including this:

I bought the entire block of stamps (there are six of each of these, all joined together) after the first space shuttle went up. I think we all know it's name.

(Note: I just redid this one. I realized when I copied and pasted my selection I cut off the two side stamps with the satellites.)

Scarey hobbit

Um... yeah. Frodo's back, and he's kind of pissed at being replaced by a coffee cup. Those tea-drinkers have a mean streak....

I can't wait

...for Movable Type 2.6 to be released. They are going to have more comment options -- such as the ability to close the comments after a certain amount of time. I think that is something my blogs, the old one and the new one, need. Now.

Where have all the philosophers gone?

The lack of civilized discourse on topics of more than trivial importance is a problem in the cradle of Western Civilization.

Everything's gone green

No, nothing is wrong with your eyes: I'm just fooling around with the look. This may change periodically throughout the day (though I have to go to work, so this green stuff may stay for a few hours). This is a modification of a stylesheet I got here, by the way; it seems to be free for use, though there are nicer layouts available for a small fee.

Ad Astra

Nothing ever dies once it's on the internet.

Home of the Ghost Lords

Hee hee -- this has been making the rounds: you've seen the Bad Engrish captions for bootleg versions of Fellowship, now marvel at the ones for The Two Towers. My favorites, just from the first page, are

• the one I used for the title
• Frodo asking Gollum for some odd reason "Haven't you Gomes" (I know that this movie is pretty Goth, but I didn't realize the Addams family was supposed to be involved)
• This one guaranteed to strike fear in the hearts of Linux users everywhere: "Release him or else I will cut you off root!"
• This complaint by Concerned Shopper Wormtongue: "Can you not see that your uncle is varied by your mall content?"
• And last, a little pronoun confusion: "too long i wanted my sister
." Those Rohirrim were jes' hillbillies after all.

(Link sent to me by Dean Esmay. Uh... thanks!)

Color changes

I am changing a few colors now. I feel somewhat less gray. I also can't think of anything intelligent to say. My brain is empty. I'm fit only for staring into space, so I guess I'll go to bed.

Just for today

I feel gray.

That is all.

Space Shuttle

Oh, crap. Yes, that's the only thing I can think of to say.

Via Cut on the Bias -- if I hadn't gone to Susanna's site I wouldn't have known about this probably until much later. I never watch tv.

Glenn Reynolds has more commentary. (I had to turn the tv off. I just can't stand the talking heads and filler talk.) He seems to think that this accident won't traumatize people like the Challenger disaster did. I'm not so optimistic about humanity: I fully expect the Safety Nazis to come out in force any minute now. And even though it is highly unlikely that terrorism had anything to do with this, I'll bet there will be a tie-in with the war effort pretty soon (they'll use the "we just lost billions of dollars and seven lives and Bush wants to throw even more money and lives away!" spiel). Yes, it's all right there in my crystal ball. One thing that won't happen? Re-thinking this whole Bureacracy in Space thing NASA has going, with its "let's just keep on using the twenty-five-year-old space vehicles instead of building newer, more efficiently-designed ones; we need to keep this quarter's budget down!" way of thinking.

Update: always believe the crystal ball. The accusation bandwagon has its first passenger, an interviewer on CBC Newsworld:

CBC Newsworld just interviewed writer Robert Sawyer for his reflections on the shuttle program and potential causes of the disaster. The Newsworld interviewer asked Sawyer whether the cause was "arrogance" on the part of the U.S. government.
............................
Furthermore... the interviewer linked American "arrogance" explicitly to current potential conflict in the Middle East.

A Further Update: Michele has lifted some rocks and found the slimy creatures thereunder emitting their predictable foul stenches.

Site news: I'm leaving just this one entry up here on the front page for today.

Swine commentary update: Bill Quick has it. To said quoted Iraqi person: you had better have said that under duress. Ah well, I bet six weeks from now (+/-) he'll be lining up to sing the praises of the US occupying forces, with his hand out. Am I cynical? You tell me.