Congratulations to some new parents

Adoption is good. Of course, being adopted, I am slightly biased towards the practice. ;)

Paint me a picture

How did Michelangelo do it? My feet and shoulders and arms are killing me.

Back in the saddle

The Timekeeper is back on his own server after a period of exile on Blowspot™.

Useless Nations

Conrad has the best line on the current situation in Africa:

Man first developed in Africa, but ceased doing so there some time ago...

The linked article is to a description of a charming cultural display of alternative cuisine choice (or an act of cannabalism, as we unreconstructed non-PCfied Haters prefer to say):

The militiamen calmly cooked the flesh over an open fire before throwing their victims, some of whom were still alive, into the flames. "They were both moving, although very weakly," Ruta said. It is accounts like this that have galvanized the horrified world into action.

Conrad then goes on to lambast the alleged "galvanized" world, and specifically the United Nations -- which Our Tax Dollars™ supposedly pay to solve these very "problems" -- for basically shrugging its collective shoulders and saying "Africans -- what more can you expect from them?" Reason No. 9987 why the UN building should be slapped with an eviction notice and its occupants shipped off to the Orkney Islands.

O sole mio

There's a new scourge. What are you doing here? (Scroll down to the latest scourge -- it's a Blogspot site, you know.)

Crapola

Nothing like waking up in a foul mood and then having to unplug and replug the cable modem because the line is clogged or whatever the hell that problem is where it won't fricking connect to anything.

What I need

I need a goddamn vacation. No, not an extra day off that is just long enough for me to catch up on all the sleep I miss during the work week. I mean a real, live, at least two-week-long vaycay. What would I do? Well, if I had all this free time (and if I had at least a couple hunnert bucks and was caught up on my bills -- these are the current obstacles to my fantasy getaway, by the way), I would drive up the Atlantic coast and maybe stop at a couple of beach towns. I'd drive all the way to Savannah, which is a cute little town, or it was the last time I was there in 1981. Then I'd drive up to Clemson, South Carolina and visit my aunt and uncle, who are getting on in years, and see my cousins that I haven't seen since the Seventies.

Or maybe not. Maybe I'd just drive up to North Florida and explore all the little towns. I dunno. I do know I would really like to see some parts of the country I have never been to, like the Midwest. Oh well. Blah blah blah. Must finish novel and shop out to publishers. Must finish degree and get "real" job again. Must break free of pall of apathetic discontent.

I promise

That no story or novel I write will ever feature characters communing with whales. Ever.

(Via Charles D. G. Hill.)

Jimtreacher.com

Yay!

Rock star on the loose

Uh oh -- someone get a net! Bob Geldof has escaped the compound and made statements critical of Robert Mugabe and the EU concerning food aid to Africa, and even worse, praised the Bush administration:

Bob Geldof astonished the aid community yesterday by using a return visit to Ethiopia to praise the Bush administration as one of Africa's best friends in its fight against hunger and Aids.

This will make the Bush=Hitler brigade fly backwards around their cages multiple times.

(Via Instapundit.)

Hole-in-none

Oh yeah, there's one little thing. I've been seeing various irate postings here and there (I can't remember where) on the matter of one of those sports dames trying to horn in on some guy-only competition. Normally I don't care one way or the other -- I'm not into sports, and I have no interest in the Feminist Struggle™ to integrate the sports world (aka "Make Them All Throw Like Girls, Inc."). But I had to laugh at some of the "sports are a guy thing" comments I've been reading, because the sport in this discussion is golf. For chrissake, it's golf, and I'm reading stuff about how women can't hack it against men, and so on. Can't hack what? Walking around in the sun? Picking a five-iron out of a bag that the caddy has been carrying? Riding around in those little carts? Wearing ugly pants?

Golf, it seems to me, is one of the few sports that you don't need an outie peepee to be good at. I think the guys were on safer ground as long as they stuck to pointing out that the lady-golfer-fembots were acting like little girls resentful that they weren't allowed in the boys' treehouse.

Please don't bother leaving comments in here about how I don't understand the game (well, duh), or that only men can play it "as it was meant to be played" (since it was reportedly invented by the Scots I imagine it really should be played in a light, barely-above-subfreezing drizzle while wearing a kilt, so you golfer guys in your ugly pants aren't playing it properly either -- and where are your sheep?), or any of that shizzat. I don't care.

The Wide Sargasso Sea

Well, I may as well take a ride on the light-blogging bandwagon. (Just surf the blogs, count all the ones that say "light blogging these days.") It's not that I have suddenly gotten one of those "life" things I keep hearing about, it's just that I have been in a writing slump, and have been singularly uninspired. Such is life. Perhaps I will change my mind ten minutes from now. Perhaps not.

With friends like these...

... a soldier in trouble is better off among his enemies. By "friends" I refer to the writer of this article, one Patrick Bishop, concerning the recently exonerated-of-war-crimes British Colonel Tim Collins. Colonel Collins was accused of roughing up and in general mistreating Iraqi POWs, a charge that turns out, shamefully, to have been trumped up by an American reservist who must have been the company brown-nose, if the petty complaints that apparently spurred his accusations are any indication.

Be that as it may, Mr. Bishop uses this episode and its happy outcome as an excuse to go off into an uncalled-for diatribe against the entire American military. We are referred to as Britain's "muscle-bound allies" and our soldiers' behavior is compared unfavorably with the shining perfection of the British:

Our soldiers, as soon as circumstances allowed, regarded the local population with rough sympathy, helping them and generally treating them as fellow members of the human race. They stripped off their body armour and helmets as quickly as they could to make themselves less threatening.

The Americans still bristle with weapons and look like martial Teletubbies, swaddled in layers of kit. They seem frightened of everything and everyone and their overwhelming concern is staying alive. To them, every Iraqi is a potential enemy, an attitude that is reinforced by the endlessly instilled doctrine of the primacy of Force Protection.

This sort of Victorian dimestore sentimentality -- British paragons of all that is righteous and true vs. brutish, subhuman American cave-soldiers -- is ridiculous, divisive, and tedious, as well as dehumanizing of the members of the British military that Mr. Bishop thinks he is lauding. It also has nothing to do with the case he started off talking about -- the American reservist who started all the trouble was apparently upset about, among other things, not being able to show off the same sort of ostentatious loving kindness that Mr. Bishop claims the British displayed. So what do the petty machinations of a "Milquetoast" like Re Biastre have to do with the bloviating about brutal, survival-obsessed American soldiers "bristling" with weapons?

Nothing, except that Mr, Bishop wanted to rant about the awful Americans, thus this long, disjointed, rambling column. A disappointment to find this nonsense in the Telegraph.

(Via NZPundit.)

Help a soldier out

A fire at Kevin's base wiped out the possessions of the servicemen whose tents burned down. He's got a Paypal button up at the site where you can donate.

Tricked-Out Hobbit-Hog

This is just so... wrong: The Lord of the Rings Harley Davidson. I've never been on a motorbike, but from the looks of it you could have a symbol of the Ring right in your crotch. Um. Okay. (Via The Onering.net.)

Movie nite

I just happened to catch The Faculty on SciFi tonight. Oh, okay, I taped it. Sue me, Elijah Wood starred, and I'm going through a cute young thing midlife crisis, though I don't see what's so "critical" about it. Anyhoo, the thing was billed as far as I have always known as a rather lame ripoff of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Leave it to movie people to totally ignore the fact that the film is actually a shoutout to Robert Heinlein's The Puppet Masters.

Anyway, it wasn't a bad waste of time, though the concept the filmmakers had of what high school is -- or was, in 1998 -- supposed to be like was hilarious. Were they all home schooled -- or more likely, did all the screenwriters graduate from Beverly Hills High? I also had somehow missed the fact that John Stewart was in it, and got to come to a bad non-end -- you'd have to see the film to know what I was talking about. And the ending was a little too pat, leaving one wondering, in the way these films do. Worth renting out as part of a two-for-one bargain.

In between preparing dinner and setting up the vcr I caught bits of the previous offering, Roman Polanski's The Ninth Gate. I had thought about taping it too, but the bits I saw made me rather glad I didn't bother; it didn't look like one of Polanski's better efforts. Perhaps I should watch the whole thing. Maybe one day if I have nothing better to do, but I have already suffered through a Bad Polanski Film, which I actually paid to see (Bitter Moon), so I don't see myself seeking it out, even for the novel sight of Johnny Depp made up to be a graying-haired, bespectacled scholar.

I forgot to add: the version of The Faculty that Scifi chose to show was the cleaned-up, one might say Tipper-Goreized, version of the film. That struck me as just so wrong; when you know that a character said "Fuck you," not "Forget you," that throws the whole viewing experience off-kilter. For chrissake, the thing was on at 9:30pm EST, when all impressionable young things are ideally supposed to be in bed dreaming of Spongebob Squarepants, or whatever. Family Hour is over at nine pm, or it is supposed to be. A minor point, maybe, but it bugged me.

Well, heck

Bleat is taking the day off. So what are us Lileks junkies supposed to do -- make up our own clever-yet-profound slice of life essays? Jeez.

Thank you!

This is just a shout-out and a thank you to those folks who have contributed to the Spleenville fund this week. What can I say but -- thank you! Among other things, the increase in my pot o'gold has enabled me to invest in Dr. Frank's Eight Little Songs CD. Dr. Frank, he of the much-heard-of Mr. T. Experience, is the source of the song "Democracy, Whiskey, Sexy." You all should at least download that song, and at ten US smackers the 8-song collection is a bargain. (Also check out "Institutionalized Misogyny." He reminds me of John Wesley Harding (you may remember him for his cover of Madonna's "Like A Prayer" -- which sounded like a halfway decent song in his hands).

Memorial Day

My observance.

Michael Moore's website hacked shock

Michael Moore's website has been hacked. The management here at Spleenville would like to go on the record as declaring the hacking of someone's website to be a deplorable and antisocial act. ("Hahahahahahah!" "Shut up!" "You shut up it's funny!" "Is not! Hee hee -- I mean -- you bad person you! Oh hahahaha...")

And here is the screen capture, for posterity. I trust that Mr. Moore's web administrator's put an end to this hilarious heinous act posthaste!

The latest from Iraq

Salam Pax has new stuff up. Interesting. (Blowspot™ is working today. Visit while you can.)

Via Jeff Jarvis.

Quote of the week

While watching an interview on MTV2's Headbanger's Ball show, I heard this answer to a question on dancing styles at heavy metal concerts: "No one dances man; I haven't seen anyone dance at a metal show in years. They beat the crap out of each other!"

Rhymes of Doom

The Goth Poetry Generator. Go on. You know you want to.

(Via Electric Venom.)

Forty

Happy Birthday to me,
Happy Birthday to me,
Happy Birthday to me,
Happy Birthday to me!

Unfortunately, I'm stuck at work for the duration. :(

Update 10.27PM EST: Woah! It's like a party on my blog! Thanks, guys!

Second update: great people have been born on May 24th! Go send Katherine a happy birthday greeting.

Lullaby

Okay, here's a Goth mp3 to soothe you to sleep, or something:

"The Passion of Lovers" -- artist: Bauhaus.

Yes, I'm feeling nostalgic. Get it while it's hot (the best way: right-click and "save target as") -- I'm not going to leave it up on the site forever.

Return of the King Pics

Good ones, available here. Dig Fierce Pippin. Yum.

Birth, School, Work, Death

I was just listening to an mp3 of that song that I downloaded from someone (probably Michele, the music download queen) when I thought to myself: "What ever happened to the Godfathers?" Well, according to this website, some of them have gotten together with some of the Damned and formed a band called the Germans. That sounds positively evil. Ah, I've seen the Damned and the Godfathers more times than I can count. Well, every time they came down to Florida anyway. I only would leave the state for bands like Bauhaus, the Cure, and U2. (One day I really need to post my experiences of all three trips to see the aforementioned bands. That and my trip to New York in 1996, supposedly to see UK band Suede, but really an excuse for me at least to finally go to New! York! City!)

Freaky Friday

Sort of watching Fright Night Part 2 on Scifi while tooling around here. I just had this revelation: vampire movies are the softcore porn of the horror movie genre. Not that there is anything wrong with that.

Not ready yet

Dang. I hate it when I almost get an idea, and in the few seconds it takes Word to fire up and present a blank page, the idea fades into puerility. Crap.

And the band played on

Well okay, I figured out how to get Windoze Media Player to copy songs from my cds. Now to figure out how to save the resulting .wma files to mp3 format. Just in case I've downloaded a free mp3 ripper from CNet, because when you come right down to it, the hell with Windoze Media Player.

Pity Party Cancelled

Oh look -- it seems that Saddam-offspring Uday has surfaced, sorta, and wants to cut a deal. See, he's afraid (in traditional spawn-of-evil-leader fashion) of his own people getting hold of him. But gosh, we don't seem to be too interested. I'm afraid that this time my atom-sized violin doesn't want to be bothered to play a sad tune for his plight. (Via Lt. Smash.)

Free Floating Musical Angst Dept Report

I do like Cold's song, "Stupid Girl."

I might as well come clean here and say that other songs I like are Queens of the Stone Age's "Go With the Flow" and P.O.D.'s "Sleeping Awake."

Stupid people catcher

I suppose there are a lot of people who, seeing an email from address "microsoft@support.com," and reading the cryptic subject "important information!" and the equally cryptic message "all information is in the attached file" would be so unwise as to click on said attached file, which was labelled "screensaver" and called something.pif.* However, I am not one of those people.

*I forget what, because I deleted it immediately.

The Pendulum and the Pit

Mrs. du Toit has a warning for society. I had the same thoughts watching and reading the shenanigans of antiwar activists. Radical behavior beyond a certain point will change society all right -- but not in the direction that the radical activists want to go. That might fulfill their martyrdom fantasies in the short run, but in the meantime people that they supposedly wanted to "help" and who do not enjoy living on the lam will suffer.

It came from the Eighties

Belfegore? Oh my god.

Things I did not know

If I lived in Wilmington, Delaware, I could live on the banks of the Brandywine River. This has been your six-degrees-of-separation-from-Middle-Earth moment.

Important announcement

Hey, Tim Blair fans, reset your blogrolls: Tim has moved into the spleenville universe, and can now be found at http://timblair.spleenville.com.

Can I just say one thing

I really, really, really hate Blogspot and Blogger. HATE them. That web service is dead to me. DEAD, do you hear?

I just wanted to get that off my chest.

Consume mass quantities

My mug is on its way.

Movable Headache

Dang, I forgot how much of a pain in the ass setting up a separate MT blog is. I should have just made a spin-off from my set. Anyway, stay tuned for something spiffy.

What the hell?

I haven't said anything about the Jayson Balir Scandal™, because feh, the New York Times, what a surprise... but I came across this article (via a commenter on Michele's site) and the last line gave me pause, to say the least:

"I was either going to kill myself or I was going to kill the journalist persona," he said. "So Jayson Blair the human being could live, Jayson Blair the journalist had to die."

In the parlance of these times, dude's got major issues. Wanker.

Michael Moore is Ted Rall's Gay Lover!

It's all true!

My aching skull

While I wait for developments re server setups and such (in prep for Tim's Big Move! Soon to be showing at a theater near you -- but is it horror or comedy?) I will tell you all about my headache, and how I went to bed early (around midnight is early for me 'kay?) expecting to get up early, like before ten am, and instead woke up very early with a sinus headache so I had to take some meds and go back to bed and didn't get up until noon.

On second thought, no I won't. Such a dull subject.

Booger eatin' moh-rons

Oh look: it's a reasonable, truth-telling, freedom-lovin' website! Sigh -- I only wish there were more of these -- it must be so hard for the Enlightened Ones to get to a computer from their cells in the Gulag. Fight the Man! (And why wasn't I included on this list! I'm twice as insane and fascist-loving as any of those other pansy websites!)

(Via Grouchy Old Cripple.)

Movement of the Blogs, cont.

Huzzah! Damian Penny is free of Blogspot!

News on the widows of the Bali terrorist attack

In this post I expressed my ire at what some of the Balinese widows of last year's terrorist attack on their island were being put through. But there is good news -- they have some help. Read the last comment in the post and check out AdoptA.

Communication breakdown

Argh. Frustrated with trying to open Tim Blair's site, I sent him this email:

How about: timblair.spleenville.com? I can set it up in five minutes. Think about it -- a nice new NON-BLOGSPOT blog running Movable Type or some other easy-to-use software that won't crash or disappear your archives.

I am sending this because I have had it with trying to load your site today. If I can save just one blogger from Blogspot.... ;)

So how about it?

Andrea Harris
http://spleenville.com/

And I mean it too. Consider it my service to the snarky-Aussie¹-dependent segment of the Blogosphere². But there seems to be something wrong with his email -- I could swear all it did was bounce my email back -- so I'm posting it here in case he or someone happens to surf by my site.

1. That's for whoever keeps searching through my site for "aussie" references.
2. Term invented by Bill Quick. I disavow all responsibility.

I should not have read this

Gee, thanks, Mr. Cosh, for making me regret eating that peanut butter sandwich just now.

Michael Moore is fat

Let me repeat: MICHAEL MOORE IS FAT.

He is a huge lardass, fattyfatfat, Fatty McFatperson Three-Big-Macs-Per-Minute Corpulent Sack of Fat. And his ego is ten times as fat. His self-regard is swaddled in layer upon layer of fat.

He is a BASTARD who is FAT.

That means he is a FAT BASTARD.

FAT FAT FAT.

Thank you, I'll be here all week.

Fatass fact-checked

It looks as if Michael Moore is going to try to spread that old lie about the planes that supposedly flew the Bin Laden family home on September 11th. Here's the entry on Snopes.com debunking this myth.

(Via Tim Blair.)

Cruel and Unusual?

Concerning the discussion of what sort of music to "break" Iraqi POWs, I think that we shouldn't try soppy pop music that makes the normal red-blooded American sick to his or her stomach. In my admittedly limited experience (one trip to Europe, watching those European music awards shows on cable teevee, going to Vietnamese restaurants here in Orlando, seeing those endless commercials for the inexplicably beloved Nana Moskouri's "hit songs" collections) the Whole Rest of the World has a bottomless appetite for soppy pop music (such as the songs in this list, especially ones like "Sometimes When We Touch.") I'd try some Death Metal instead -- maybe some Cannibal Corpse or Malevolent Creation. Yes, those are real bands.

I forgot to add: the year I went to Europe (1981) there was no excape in any country I went to from ABBA's "Fernando" (the last on Iowahawk's list). Everywhere we went that song was playing on some loudspeaker system somewhere. Even Scotland.

Desecration

The recent World War II Remembrance Day ceremonies in the Netherlands were disrupted and desecrated by Moroccan youths. Here's a portion of an account by Peaktalk on these incidents:

I wanted to share this with you as Dutch newspapers last week reported that Moroccan youths had disturbed a number of these ceremonies throughout the country earlier this week. In one instance by throwing eggs onto participants and in another by playing football with the wreaths. The absolute bottom was reached when during the ceremony in one of Amsterdam’s suburbs a number of these youths shouted “we must kill the Jews”. This under any circumstance is a grieving and depraved comment, but to shout it out in a city from which 100,000 Jews disappeared never to return during the most sensitive of commemorations is beyond belief and it was no doubt perpetrated on purpose. I am not writing this as yet another piece seeking to provide further evidence of the ever growing levels of anti-Semitism Europe, although that would certainly warrant a post on this site. What happened last week goes well beyond anti-Semitism.

Via Dilacerator, who says incidents like these are being covered up.

If looks could kill they probably will

Here's a little something to keep us all occupied while we all wait until December to roll around: Tolkien computer games.

Or you could go play Tolkien Baseball.

(Yes, I am feeling to ill to post anything of note tonight. Darn stomach virus.)

Goth not dead!

It's undead. Gaze upon a short Flash film on vampirism and stuff, starring Andrew Castel-Dodge. This takes me back to those days of dancing all night at the Kitchen Club... (or, in my case, staggering in place; I dance about as well as the average day-old corpse).

Movin' on out

White House Press Secretary (and according to some, raving attack dog!) Ari Fleischer is resigning. I can dig it. Being press secretary during a war is one thing, but during a presidential campaign? I'd be out of there too, so fast I'd leave skid marks on that little stage they use. ( Via Instapundit.)

Shout out

Steven Den Beste has a column on OpinionJournal. Way to go. (Via Cut on the Bias -- if Den Beste said anything about it on his own site I missed it.)

Sleight of hand

Mr. Bill Whittle weighs in against magical thinking. I told my Medieval Humanities professor that the majority of people in the world were still in thrall to the sort of superstitions that supposedly had been banished by the Renaissance, or maybe it was the Enlightenment. I'm not sure he believed me, but then again he was from some place like Pakistan, so maybe he did.

Shot from a cannon

Concerning so-called "assault rifles" and the proposed ban thereupon -- I have a few things to say. No -- actually, I have just one thing to say:

ALL RIFLES ARE ASSAULT RIFLES YOU FUCKWITS.

Jesuschrist when is the stupidity going to end? You can't say "that there is an assault rifle" as if there was otherwise such thing as a "cuddle gun" that gives you a hug instead of putting a hole in you, or a "warm blanket rifle" that tucks itself around you to keep you from getting a chill. This "assault rifle" thing is beyond stupid, something only a nanny-wannabe from Betty Friedan's suburban hell could possibly think actually was a sane category. Guns, rifles, knives, etc., are weapons, and weapons have one main purpose, and that is to assault the other fool before he can assault you. That's what self-defense is, by the way (let me just insert this here for the benefit of all those people who keep whining about the US and its "pre-emptive wars"). It's not some sort of Disneyesque ideal of standing Staunch and Firm and Frowning Authoritatively and Speaking in a Loud, Clear, Calm Voice to the world's villains until they are overcome with the shame of their own perfidy and slink away to sulk in a cave.

Anyway, Frank's list is funny. Read it.

Warm Featherette

The American Imperial Cultural Hegemon continues its invasion of the pristine sands of the Middle East! Oh the humanity! When will it end, when????

Just one more before I go

I fell in love with a car last night.

Really: on my way to my car after work last night there was a vehicle parked next to mine that immediately awakened my quite irrational machine lust. It was a Jeep Grand Cherokee, a four-door, and it was by no means a late model car. It didn't have that stupid rounded-corners look that all the cars, trucks, and SUVs have sported for the last few years. I can't explain it -- I just love square, boxy little car-truck things. Sure, the rounded look is aerodynamic and all that and saves gas and keeps us from smothering the whales with ozone or something. I still prefer the square look. Also, it had those handicapped-unfriendly push-button door handles. It looked (as far as I could tell in the sodium lights of the parking lot) to be in pretty good shape. I've been sitting here wondering if I should trade my little expensive rice-burner in for a used Jeep Cherokee. These almost-three-hundred-dollar-a-month payments are killing me. (I also like Land Rovers, but they cost the earth.)

Future posts

I'm putting this up to remind me of some posts I want to do today, when I get around to it/have more coffee in me:

A subject near and dear to my coal-black heart has been brought up by Steven Chapman (at 12:46 GMT on Sunday May 18) and Brian Micklethwait over at Libertarian Samizdata: High-Brow Littrichoor vs. what people actually want to read.

Speaking of Tolkien (heh), I've been wanting to post for some time on some things he brought up in an essay in The Tolkien Reader called "Ofermod." (That's an Anglo-Saxon word that means something like "hubris" did to the Greeks, only not really.) Maybe if I put this reminder note here I will get to it.

I was going to blog about China Miéville's scifi-fantasy-grotesque novels but I have yet to read Perdido Street and The Scar all the way through. So that will have to wait.

I can't resist rattling the bars of the cage: A.C. Douglas tossed a brand onto the fire a few days ago when he asserted here that there are more quality female-written blogs than male-written blogs.¹ Naturally I have something to say about that. (Muahahaha... rubs hands together in wicked anticipation.) (1. Update: must... concentrate... must... learn to count/read/see/type... But I still have much to say about gender superiority in writing. Or, well, something, anyway.)

In the comments to this post, my assertion that college isn't necessary for everyone ruffled some feathers. I'll be expanding on my reply there. (Maybe I should add that permalinking feature for individual comments to my blog. We'll see.)

Boycott Hollywood links to this interview with Janeane Garofalo. My opinions on what she has to say are forthcoming. (Side note: "forthcoming" -- now there's an Anglo-Saxon word-formation.)

I can't remember anything else I want to do a post on right now, but I'm sure I'll think of more later. But I think this is enough for now.

Late Nite Teevee Follies

The conspiracy to keep me from liking teevee continues apace: last night, afflicted with my usual insomnia (when two glasses of wine and an antihistamine don't do anything to knock me out I think that qualifies as insomnia) I lay in bed and flipped channels on my bedroom teevee. Since the bedroom set isn't hooked up directly to the box, I don't get all the channels, but I do get Scifi on it. Last night there were back-to-back made-for-Scifi offerings. I left versions of the following in the comments to this post of Michele's on bad movies, but I was so proud of them (har har) I thought I'd offer them to all five of my readers:

Speaking of awful movies, do tv movie series count? I'm thinking of something the Scifi channel has started playing called "The Deathlands." It's some post-Apocalyptic crapola filmed all in orange. I guess it's to convince us that in the future all our cyan filters will have been destroyed. Best line so far, from former porn star Traci Lords: "Die, Mutie bitch!" ("Mutie" as in "mutant" -- mutant meaning you have long red hair and look smashing in a ragged leather minidress.) There's also a hero with an eyepatch.

Right after that thing was over the next movie on Scifi was something called "The Apocalypse." It was some sort of thing set in outer space. It featured that chick from Sex, Lies, and Videotape (the bad sister) playing a crazy woman in a space ship whose dialogue consisted of the soliloquies from Hamlet, and Sandra Bernhard playing a captain of a space ship. I would have watched the whole rancid thing but I needed to sleep, and I haven't hooked the videotape machine up to the cable. (This was also filmed all through some sort of rust-colored filter. Are they having budget problems at the Scifi channel? They can't seem to afford to use the entire color spectrum.)

Betrayer

There I was happily half-listening/not-really-watching Headbangers Ball on MTV2 when they started showing that guy from Staind playing live in the studio. Noooooo--!

Quick... channel change... Ahhh. Saved by Motley Crüe's "Girls Girls Girls" on Vh1 Classics.

Update: MTV2 is having Unplugged now, that's why the bald, ugly, depressing Staind guy is still on. Fortunately, Vh1 Classics is having repeats of old heavy metal and hair metal band videos. I needed some cheese tonight.

The Matrix, Exploded

Ah, the Matrix Reloaded: "It's hot!" "It's cool!" "It sucks!" "It's the Best! Movie! Ever!" "It's a huuuuge disappointment!" "It's got Christian themes!" "No! It's got Buddhist themes!!!" "You're a sucker to go see it!" "No! You must go see it!"

For chrissake people it's just a movie. It stars Keanu Reeves, for godsakes. I didn't see the original Matrix in the theater, I saw it at a friend's house on his big screen tv. It was okay. I enjoyed it. The plot was fairly clever for movies of this sort, and the cgi and all that was amusing. But still, it was your basic hero vs. villains rescuing the fair maiden tale. And anyway, we know what movie you really should be anticipating as you would your wedding night.

In the belly of the cod

Among the reasons why I might be tempted to keep the cable teevee: the cool stuff that does occasionally turn up. For one thing, BBCAmerica is showing a David Bowie concert right now. He's still the nazz. Also, I saw some of The Iron Chef. Either the Japanese are one seriously fucked up people, or they are the coolest nation on the planet. Tonight's theme was cod. Or as the Iron Chef expressed it: "Caaaahhhhhddd!" One of the guest/contestant chefs was one of the Japanese royal family's chefs. The look on his face clearly said: "I went to Japanese haute cuisine school for this?" I had to change the channel, though, because eating leftover pizza does not mix well with the sight of some guy digging brain-colored roe out of a giant cod's guts.

Blogrollup

I have had to cut down on the number of blogs on my blogroll. If your blog has vanished from the list, it doesn't mean that I don't love you or anything like that. I just had to get rid of some of the sites that hadn't been updated in a while, or that for some reason or other I had stopped reading, or had linked to on a whim and become disinterested in -- or just plain had no time to read! This way maybe I won't be so intimidated into reading some of the remaining seldom-read (by me, anyway) blogs that are still on it. The roll had just become too huge for me to deal with.

TV Damnation

Among the reasons why I may not keep this free cable teevee, despite the wonders of good reception and being able to watch reruns of McMillan and Wife on the Hallmark channel is -- oh, well, just read this:

LOS ANGELES - Reality television has officially swallowed the United States whole. Three of the top four TV shows last week were American Idol, Survivor and American Idol again. Actors and writers walk around Hollywood with beaten looks on their faces, mumbling about the Good Old Days when the boob tube was filled with scripted programming performed by actual artists.

I saw a snippet of one of those shows -- I forget which one, they all run together in my mind until they form some Dante-esque vision of hell where there's a stage on an island lit only by huge tacky klieg lights and unpleasant hosts with snide British accents run around with pitchforks stabbing at unattractive half-naked ex-bar-hags who are too busy fighting over some dufous of a guy who is supposed to be a millionaire but is really a postal worker from Cleveland to notice. Unlike many other sad victims (some of whom openly admit, and even seem to celebrate, their addiction) I am unable to watch these shows because I never could enjoy pain. Watching "reality" teevee is like having the air sucked out of your head with a straw through the sinus cavity, or ten-thousand ice cream headaches all at once, or nails scraping along a blackboard amplified to ten thousand decibels. But, to each their own.

(PS: yes, I am tracking back to those persons' weblogs because I am evil.)

Bread and Nuances

Concerning the recent bombings in Morocco, I have been reading here and there (most recently in the comments to this post) some expressions of astonishment that Belgian interests were apparently among those targeted, since Belgium is currently pursuing efforts to set up some sort of international kangaroo court with which to try upstart Americans "war criminals" like General Franks. Of course this astonishment has a sarcastic edge; I don't think that many people, at least on the pro-war-against-terrorists side, are really surprised that Al Qaeda & Co. are not telegraphing their attacks according to who is currently attempting to appease them, or whatever it is the Belgian contingent thinks it is doing with its "antiwar" posturing. At the risk of repeating myself, these terrorists are Arab supremacists, and they care not a whit for the good opinions and peace offerings of Western infidels. If such antics momentarily give their cause a boost by diverting American/allied efforts against them they are fine with that, but it makes no difference to them in the long run, because as far as the terrorists are concerned we are all worm food. And they just might put their "appeasers" up against the wall first, just on general principles. No one, even evil sons of nazis, likes people who betray their own.

This isn't deep wisdom: I figured all that out about five minutes after the World Trade Center was attacked. I'm not going to make any claim to being a Big Brain either: I garnered my deep wisdom by sitting on my ass reading mostly junk like science fiction and fantasy, watching crap movies on tv, and occasionally talking to my fellow clueless humans. I am not particularly well-traveled: I've been to Europe exactly once, over twenty years ago. I learned that they sure do love soppy pop music there, and everything is uphill except in the Netherlands. I've been to college -- in the parlance, I have "some college" education. I may never finish, because there is one thing I now know and that is that you don't go to college to get educated. Maybe that is why all these eggheads with their PhDs in PoliSci and Sociology are so solid between the ears about this little Islamofascist problem: they actually thought they were learning something while they were being filled up with the latest kewl theories. Then again, I could be wrong. Maybe all the terrorists want is a hug.

Return of the King

There are some new images available of the upcoming third part of Lord of the Rings. It's looking good so far.

There were also some other pictures up on this site earlier today, but they were removed at the request of the filmakers. The reason given is that they were of poor quality -- I can vouch for that, having seen them; for the most part they were dark, blurry, and barely recognizable to someone who hadn't already seen parts one and two of the trilogy.

The latest terrorist attack

It was in Morocco this time -- in Casablanca. That's ironic, in a way. I just happened to catch the story on CNN when I came in and turned the tv on. The Arabs are pissed -- at Al Qaeda & Co. The Islamofascisti continue to shoot off their own feet, dig their own grave, hoist themselves by their own petard, and so on.

Looking for Mr. Good-Baghdad

Speaking of hoaxes, there's a big Is He Or Isn't He argument going on about Salam Pax, that Where is Raed guy. Columnist David Warren is quite miffed about his assertion that Pax was really a Ba'athist spy. Even though I have had my own suspicions that Pax wasn't being 100% truthful with us (duh, ya think?), it seems to me that Warren is being a little over the top here.

There's a lot more informed opinion on this at Winds of Change. I'll just say that if he was a spy, what exactly was blogging supposed to accomplish? Disinformation? Well, I seriously doubt that the administration was using his blog as a major source of info about Baghdad. To foment antiwar sentiment? From what I have seen from commenters to his blog, and elsewhere, most peoples' war sentiment, whether pro- or anti-, was already set in cement, and those who admitted to being fence sitters changed their opinion one way or another for reasons other than sympathy for one blogger's personal plight.

In any case, to claim that all bloggers have swallowed his story hook, line, and sinker is something of a canard. Questions about the veracity of his blog are by no means a new phenomenon -- there have been other bloggers who opined last year that he might be a fake, long before any big pundit even knew his blog existed -- but now that the war is over (more or less) and Saddam is out of a job, presumably at one point or other we'll find out the truth.

(PS: I realize that Where is Raed is not just Salam Pax's blog, but I use "his" for purposes of brevity.)

Update: Lynn at Reflections in D Minor has some cogent observations too. (I linked, Lynn!)

Another escapee from Blogspot

Hey, everyone -- look who's moved. Go visit! (And now you can!)

Fox on the run?

Oh, what utter bullshit.

For one thing, guess who's involved. If that doesn't set off your alarm bells, then the mere fact that someone on the run from a family that "is an alarmingly influential pillar of a small European country, deeply meshed into the financial fabric of the nation and at the core characterized by the highest extremes of power and influence" is keeping a weblong with extensive entries should be a clue. Especially now that the site has been moved from the relative anonymity of Blogspot to its own domain. If her family is so much like the Corleones, isn't she afraid of endangering whoever registered the domain for her? I guess not -- but then she probably isn't even real. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if this isn't another of Mr. Plagiarist's performance-art-like stunts designed to mess with the blogworld's collective head.

As a side note, I can't understand the praise this writer, whoever it is, is getting from people. "She's a great writer" my ass. My cursory visits to her site to get an idea of what this was all about nearly caused me to go into a coma from boredom. If you have an old, dull, well-worn plot like "rich, powerful, and controlling family vs. frightened-yet-determined rebellious daughter" you sure had better have a writing style that raised your story above all the others mouldering in the remainders box with their front covers torn off. This girl (or whatever) doesn't -- she's so dull she makes me want to go to a used bookstore and dig up something by Barbara Cartland.

(Via Neal Sheeran.)

Who needs The Matrix?

This promotional free cable teevee I'm getting provides a bunch of Showtime channels. On something called Showtime Extreme they're showing some wack kungfu movie called Master of the Flying Guillotine. I turned the channel just as it was in the middle of some crazy flashback all in magenta. Some guy with one arm was chopping the heck out of some crazy old man with a braid. Then it goes into normal (pretty good for 1975 too) color. There's this scene in one of those kungfu schools with the one-armed guy telling all his students about said flashback. Then this weird horn music starts playing and they all turn to stare at this weirdo who comes in doing this weird Oriental dance and playing a horn. Then he starts some chopsocky free-for-all goodness. And oh my god, is the dubbing awful.

Now this "Indian" guy in a turban with an owl on his shoulder just set the hero's room on fire. Now they are chopping at each other. I really must get around to watching my (undubbed) Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon dvd one of these days.

Secret favorite song

I'm listening to one of the digital radio stations that cable teevee offers, the one that plays songs from the seventies. They started to play Bobby Goldsboro's "Summer (the First Time)." I hadn't heard that song in years. It was once my favorite song... it almost made up for "Honey." Almost.

What's your secret favorite song?

Feel the love!

I've got fans. Refresh for some of my best sayings. Couldn't have designed it better myself. (PS: I guess this was supposed to be some sort of insult, but I'm rather flattered instead. Sorry, guys.)

Update: bwahahahaha!

Bring back the blink tag!

I think this is the first time in internet history that a website has been criticized for not being flashy enough.

I can see clearly now

All this time I had Clear Type as part of XP and I didn't know it. Rock. (Thanks to Donald Sensing for the tip.)

Lush Life, Pt. 5681

I washed the dishes and put some coffee on and then put some water in the pot for pasta (I can't afford my weight-losing all-meat diet right now) and then went to sit down and blog and stuff. A little while later I decided to check on the water. It wasn't boiling. Of course, water boils a lot faster when the stove is turned on.

Blue Highway

Well, that was a fun evening. I start on my way home, only to realize my car is making that BBBBPPPPRRRRRAAPPPP noise and doing that lurching thing that means, oh joy, a front tire has gone flat. No big deal, I pulled into a street next to one of the auto dealerships I deal with at work and one of the salesmen there helped me change my tire. (Okay, all I did was stand around while he changed my tire.) Then I drove home on the pathetic little donut. I'm just glad I don't have to drive on I-4. This means I'll be looking forward to buying at least two tires this Friday -- it would be stupid to put a brand new tire next to an aged and probably about-to-go old tire. (Hey, it looked like they still had tread to me. So I didn't do the dime test. And in any case, it's useless -- they are doing so much construction in this area that there are screws and nails and other sharp things everywhere. You're doomed either way.)

Then I get home, and of course the cable is working. I guess the scales are balanced for now.

Well, hell

Cable teevee hell has already started. I turned it on only to see a message that my service had been turned off, to call the service. So I call. "Oh, they changed some software, call this number to have your box turned back on." So I did, and after twenty minutes of unsuccessful fiddling I have another appointment with a cable guy on Thursday. All hail technology! Frankly, I think it's a conspiracy to get me to wake up early.

Oh well, I still have my dvd player. By the way -- I just wanted to point this out: the opening words of The Fellowship of the Ring where Galadriel is "the world is changing, I feel it in the water, I feel it in the air" etc., are actually in the book -- Treebeard says them to Pippin and Merry in The Two Towers. It strikes me as quite clever of the scriptwriter to choose those words to open the movie with. (With which to open the movie? Bah, you're not getting good grammar from me at this hour.)

Where is my mind?

Oh god, I just found myself thinking that Tiffany's* version of "I Think We're Alone Now" wasn't half bad. The chick still couldn't dance to save her life, though.

*I was also unaware that she still had a career. I pay no attention to these things, usually.

Eighties flashback continued

Geez. I had forgotten all about double-wrapped belts with studs, wearing suits with the jacket sleeves rolled up, singers with bleached ivory hair and black eyebrows, and androgynous guitarists who were nevertheless actually attractive instead of merely creepy.

On the latest terrorist fun and games

They were just yammering on CNN or something about the recent terrorist attacks in Riyadh. Jesus, who cares what the group that did it calls themselves? Let's just drop all this "was it Al Qaeda? Or some other (insert some Arabic phrase)?" nonsense and call them something generic, like "the usual bunch of cretins." And their motives are no big mystery; I am sure I know why the cretins blew up stuff in Saudi Arabia this time. They want to get rid of all the Westerners there, and then all the rest of the foreigners, Muslim though all those Indians and Indonesians and Malaysians might be. The Usual Bunch of Cretins are Arab supremacists just like the Nazis were "Aryan" supremacists. They are just another flavor of terror pie, like Bin Laden and his Taliban crew, and that joker we just kicked out of Iraq. It's all from the same shelf of fly-specked, half-baked goods.

Moore teevee

Wow, Michael Medved and that guy on MSNBC's Scarborough Country show really just slammed Michael Moore up against the wall. "Liar," Fraud," and so on. Cable teevee has gotten fun.

Of course, everything they are talking about has already been talked about in blogs. (The Minuteman mascot hullabaloo at UMass, Senator and ex-Kleagle Byrd's hypocritical huffing over the president's wearing "military" regalia when he flew on that fighter jet to the carrier, and so on.)

I don't mind you coming here, and wasting all my time

Well, I've got cable teevee (and a clear picture) for the first time since sometime in 2000, and I have no idea how much older celebs and music people and such have gotten in the past three years because right now I am watching VH1C, and they are playing old 80s videos. Right now they have the Kinks doing a live version of "You've Really Got Me Now," and they just finished playing the Cars "Just What I Needed." Aaagghh! The clueless limp-spaghetti-armed dancing! The in-between-fashion-movements look of everyone's hair and clothes (basically everyone looked as if their 70s Farrah Fawcett shags had grown out and they were making do with their over-laundered old disco clothes until someone thought up new ways for people to look)! The shine all over everything that was "different" from that washed-out matte look popular in the Seventies but was not yet Eighties glitter! And... everything was pink. Weird. Did I actually live through all that?

My only weakness is a listed crime

My only weakness, well never mind, never mind.

(Yes -- it's another episode of Name That Song!)

Anger is an energy

Oh dear. I have been reprimanded. (See the fifteenth comment down from Concerned Troll Reader Phillip Harrington.) I keep trying to remember to turn that frown upside down, but it's not easy, being that my heart is a lump of coal and all.

Cable teevee goodies

Well, the dealer cable guy was just here and he finished installing my new addiction one month of free cable. The first thing I find is an unexpected treat: a Simple Minds concert from 1995 on some channel called Trio. I'd only ever seen them live once, in 1985, when the success of that song from The Breakfast Club made it possible for their tour to make it all the way down to Miami. I've got to get my videotape machine hooked up to this teevee. (The machine is attached to the useless bedroom teevee, which is only set to get the first twenty-five channels or so.)

Note to the Metapop folks

Why the fuck would I want to "log in" to your service if by merely visiting your page without logging in I'm labelled an anonymous coward? Kiss my ass.

Oh -- and pale blue sucks much dee eye see kay. I preferred your original green background.

Warning signs

Kevin Parrott is pissed off at Blogger. If I were the Blogger people, I'd be hiding under my desks right now and sucking my thumbs. (I'd be plural too.) Aw heck, they have probably been doing that for weeks now.

Also: dig those crazy signs. I was going to make some in the neat sign-maker program (needs Acrobat Reader), but I couldn't think of anything neat to say.

(No, no permalinks, you can't connect to any permalinks in Blogspot blogs, what are you, crazy?)

Update: Kevin has Paypal and Amazon links up -- help a fellow blogger escape from the evil Blogspot dungeon.

British National IQ test

Hey, if you're British go here and test your IQ. I was going to but it asked me what part of the UK I was from and it didn't really seem right to pick a region despite all the British people that live in the Orlando area. Anyway, I'm sure that there is no test that can measure the hugeness of my IQ, but you mortal humans folks might want to try.

(Via the clinic.)

Of course I am

You are smart and sexy!


Which Ultimate Beautiful Woman are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Via Jet's Place.

Art heist

Now here's a good, old-fashioned act of art-thievery:

A work of art that has been described as "the Mona Lisa of sculptures" has been stolen from Vienna's art history museum.

The 16th Century solid gold sculpture by Benvenuto Cellini was worth at least 50m euros ($57m, £36m), museum director Wilfried Seipel said.

This is one of the art pieces I studied in at least two of my humanities courses last year. I'll bet you this is going straight to some rich oil sheik's or drug-dealer's vault -- it's the sort of ostentatious gold stuff guys like that dote on.

The alarm sensors in the museum didn't go off. Can you say, "inside job"? I knew you could.

(Via Tim Blair, tomorrow.)

Anti-gun, man

Actually, if I were planning on going on a killing spree, I certainly would be against gun violence -- against myself, anyway. After all, getting shot in self-defense would certainly put a crimp in my plans to shoot a bunch of other people. (Via The Volokh Conspiracy, via Instapundit.)

Oversexed and over there

David Frum praises the unrestrained, sexy, British -- or does he?? (Scroll down to the bottom of the page.)

(Via a commenter in this post on Joshua Claybourn's blog.)

Dammit, people

My blog, my rules. My blog, my rules. MY BLOG, MY GODDAMN RULES. Why can't you understand that?

Here, I'll try to make it easy for you. In your house, say you don't want anyone to smoke. You tell people: "I'm sorry, no smoking inside." The people don't like it? Tough shizzle. Friends don't treat friends like doormats -- and strangers don't treat strangers whose homes they have been invited into like ashtrays. One does, of course, make certain accomodations for people -- one does not hang visitors from meathooks or make them sing the theme from "Annie" while letting one's dog hump their leg, but otherwise it's the duty of the guest to behave. And if the guest ceases to behave the guest deserves to get his ass handed to him in a sack.

Here are some things I don't want to see on my blog. Their appearance will get your ass handed to you in a small paper sack:

1. Any more comments referencing, favorably or unfavorably, the Country-Pop Trio Who Shall Not Be Named.
2. Any reference to the 2000 "stolen" election. The last time I checked my calendar we were halfway through 2003. I am not responsible for your psychological inability to accept the passage of time.
3. Any reference to anything the US does as being "all about the OIIILLLL." That includes saying, "But it is all about the oil --" and then listing umpteen thousand reasons to support your claim. Been there, done that, I'm over it.
4. Any reference to how we "had no right to interfere" in Iraq or Afghanistan or wherever the hell. It's not only a little too late to piss and moan about that now; but I will simply redirect you to this article until you either get it or get tired.
5. If, after reading the above article, you comment that the US "didn't really care about the Iraqi people, that wasn't the real reason for the invasion" yadda yadda, my reply to you will be: "Neither did you nor anyone else." Please note also that the shelf life of that argument is well past its expiration date.
6. Comments telling me that I am "vicious," "mean," or that I should be "nicer" in order to "persuade" people to come across to my point of view. I am not interested in "persuading" anybody of anything. I use this blog to express my opinions on things, and if others are entertained, that is fine with me. If somehow some rant of mine causes someone to rethink a position of theirs, that's nice, but I am not responsible for how others conduct their own thought processes. I am also not particularly interested in "being nice." I already have friends. They know what I am like.
7. People who ask snippily: "So what do you have a blog for anyway if it isn't to communicate?" Please see above, and remind yourself that "communication" doesn't always end happily. Consider it a life lesson.
8. And last (for now): any "helpful" comments suggesting I am getting "too upset" over something -- trolls, politics, the weather -- even from people I like, will get an eyebrow-singeing reply from me. I really am not interested in changing the name of my blog even though it is obvious that it is not enough that my domain is called "Spleenville" to get across to people the sort of stuff they are likely to find herein.

There. I hope this was an aid to all visitors and potential commenters.

Infidels, widows and humans, oh my!

At the trial of the Bali terrorists, the defendants claim that they were doing good, because

"Australians, Americans, whatever - they are all white people."

As well as being, of course, sinners and infidels. Well, that's par for the course among these Superior Third World™ Cultures that Have No Concept of Racism. White people (and sinners and infidels) aren't human anyway, so what do you expect?

But in this related article, we come to this little cultural tidbit:

"...Single mothers in Indonesia are unusual and these women say neighbours and friends have turned on them since their husbands died. They now live with relatives, or alone, surviving on handouts from welfare groups, or by part-time work in a co-operative formed three months ago by an Australian couple. Now they have been told the handouts will stop in three weeks.
Ratnitiasiah, 37, has had no income since the remains of her taxi driver husband, I Made Wijaya, were handed to her in three envelopes.

The mother of three ran a street food stall but was so shamed by gossipers who said she was having affairs with every man who stopped at her stall that she felt she had to close it.

She has been told to leave her rented home in a few weeks, but her landlord will not say why. She will have nowhere to live..."

They aren't even allowed to attend the trial of their husbands' killers.

That's right. Husbands. Excuse me, I am now going to take the kid gloves of sarcasm off.

To the neighbors of these women: you shits. You fucking pieces of flyblown excrement of dogs. No -- I take that back. I would like to apologize to dogs, flies, and excrement for associating something so low as you people with them. There is no word sufficient to describe the disgust I feel at the idea that there are people who would treat widows -- who were lawfully married by the tenets of your own customs, laws, and religion -- the way you are treating them. If you were on fire I wouldn't piss on you to put out the flames. I hope the terrorists get you next time. I hope your corpse-pieces get eaten by rats. No, that would poison the rats. You don't even deserve to get dissolved in an acid bath.

"Single mothers"? Screw these fucks and the asshole who decided to use that term instead of the proper term for a woman whose husband has been killed, which is WIDOW. And -- [ANN COULTER VOICE] take the rest of that island and totally Disney-Western-Sin-ify it. Cover it in Hiltons and Mickey-D's. Send Western tourists there by the boatload, until everyone man, woman, and child is fat, decadent, and rich. And hang all the terrorists and the widow-shunners in the public square. [/ANN COULTER VOICE]

I'm so sick of crap like this.

(Via The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler.)

The Earth-shattering kaboom

Stupid trolls, why are you bothering me instead of discussing reasons why Star Trek sucks? Come on -- we can't all be suffering over the Fate of Man Person Bipedkind all day. Put down your Chomsky Bibles and peruse Happy Fun Pundit: Top 10 Things I Hate About Star Trek. You'll feel... cleansed.

Flies

Ah. I see what your pathetic little game is. Your drug-, booze, and cock-addled little brainettes have come up with the hilarious fun plan of "Let's see whose blogs we can harass into shutting down their comments sections and maybe even closing down entirely!" That game might work on some people, but not on me.

Come. I invite you. Post your comments. I think it's hilarious when the feeble-minded try to be witty and cruel when they don't even have the talent to be pathetic and stupid. It's lots more fun than bowhunting Helpless Thirdworld Children™. That was getting kind of boring.

PS: to everyone else, I really am beginning to think there is some sort of psychosis going around. For instance, I see that I am not the only one who is experiencing an upsurge in bizarre, random trollage from what seems to be members of some particularly distasteful cult. I only hope these cultees make like the followers of the late Reverend Jim Jones and guzzle the Koolaid soon, because they are using up valuable oxygen.

Update: they've made the mistake of bothering Acidman. Well, we have already established how stupid these trolls are.

Bad book alert

Wow. This really does sound like one of the worst books ever written.

Gluttons for punishment

Some people just like to be spanked. Here's a particularly sad case: someone calling itself "The Voice of Reason" (wow, that's so... original) left this in the comments to this post:

Hey Andrea, Why not save yourself some time and trouble by limiting your responses to either "I know you are, but what am I?", or "la, la, la - I have my hands over my eyes and can't see what you wrote."?

If, as you contend, you did not care what others think, you wouldn't spend some much time saying so.

You're a fucking psychopath, established beyond a doubt by your rules prohibiting the expression of anything you don't understand, or "trying out amateur psychology BS on me."

oops. bet I just got myself banned from the kingdom.

Why yes, as a matter of fact, you are, as of now, banned. I don't know why -- it must be because, fucking psychopath that I am, I object to some tiny-penised, shrunken gonad of a loser calling me "a fucking psychopath" in much the same manner as I would object to having shit smeared on my face. But I guess that puzzles hairy-palmed cellar-dwelling defectives like Voice, since they seem to spend so much of their time with their faces buried in feces.

All kidding aside, what I would like to know is -- who the fuck are you, and what is your problem with me? As far as I can recall, I have never encountered you before (unless you are a coward and are using a different name -- that would be typical) and if I did it wasn't memorable to me. I don't know you from Adam, nor do I want to; and I can only wonder at the emptiness of the life of someone who goes to a stranger's blog and shits all over it like you just did.

Anyway, thanks so much for your comments, Mr. or Ms. Voice at HEY SPAMBOTS, OVER HERE --> mjps85122@prodigy.net.

Oh yeah -- if you continue to harrass me, either by commenting from another IP or emailing me, then I will complain to your IP.

Update: One of Mr. or Ms. Voice's hose-babes, one "ally" whose email address (HEY SPAMBOTS -- HERE'S ANOTHER) is "feyfaer@yahoo.com" (oh give me a fucking break with these pathetic teens -- I'll bet this one has "radical" pink hair and a butterfly wing tatt on each ass-cheek) has weighed in with her deep wisdom. Thanks for the advice, porkmunch. Now get back to greasing your daddy's sausage, or he won't give you any more crack money.

Second update: kudos from Wogblog. Heh heh. (Search for "porkmunch.")

Blogs across the water

Here's a blog from Iceland. Icelandic is another of those languages I always wanted to learn in my ever-shrinking "spare time." (I always thought the word "blog" had a kind of Nordic sound to it, and I like the sound of those languages, which is probably why the word doesn't awaken feelings of loathing in me that it does in other people.)

Two things

One: It took nearly twenty minutes for this site to do a complete rebuild. I had the same problem last night.

Two: I've reset the size of the titles to each post. Now to figure out how I want the dates to look.

You can eat cake!

Oh -- wait. No you can't.

(Via Robyn.)

Mullah over this

Despite his reputation in certain quarters as some sort of rightwing ranter, Glenn Reynolds rarely seems to get really mad. Here's a rare example of anger from the Instapundit:

HERE'S THE LATEST on jailed Iranian blogger Sina Motallebi. He's accused of selling "depraved" videos -- of weddings.

Note to Iranian mullahs: you're utterly pathetic. You are neither feared, nor respected for your piety. You're just a joke, in the eyes of the world and, these days, your own people.

Go to the link in the quote and you'll see his anger is more than justified. Stupid mullahs.

Politically Incorrect diseases

The phenomenon of Political Correctness has finally reached its nadir of idiocy: now even microbes are being subjected to its hair-splitting (cilia-splitting?) criteria. From an article on the curious fact that all the lookalike "SARS week" magazine covers of the major newsmagazines used Caucasian models for a disease that originated in and has so far mostly affected an Asian country, is this quote:

Jim Kelly, the managing editor of Time, explained his thinking about cover girls as follows: "It was a very conscious decision on our part to pick a blond-haired, blue-eyed woman who looked like she got off the beach at Laguna. We wanted to go with a Western woman because we felt the disease was stigmatizing Asians unfairly."

At last, something about SARS that the hordes of PC can safely hate and fear: it's not just a disease that kills humans, it's a racist disease.

(Via alert reader Darth Monkeybone, who emailed me the article.)

New site look

Right now I've set the site up using this template from Empty Pages. I'll be fiddling with it, but I think that I have at last broken free of divs. Now to test in other browsers...

Okay, it works in Mozilla and Opera 7. By the way, text is resizable.

The time of the manuscripts

Years of Pain, And the Words To Describe It -- Hidden Writings Portray Life as Enemy of Hussein:

But now Hussein was gone and Samarrai's manuscripts were in full view. They spilled from manila folders piled high on wooden shelves where space had been cleared for their welcome. When Basra fell to British forces on April 7, Samarrai felt safe enough to thumb through an entire work without fear. When the Baghdad government collapsed two days later, he saw what looked like deliverance and reunited his works in plain sight.

(Via Random Jottings.)

Rock star

Ken Layne: rock star. Now we can all say we knew him when...

Livin' in the Eighties

Perfect morning get-moving song: Prince's "Let's Go Crazy." Don't let the elevator break you down.

Too tired to blog

Nighty-nite. Don't let the trolls bite.

(Click this)

Pour some sugar on me

I got a call the other day and it was a saleslady from Brighthouse, which used to be Time-Warner Cable. Brighthouse has been having a promo. After I hung up I not only had one free month on my Earthlink account, I had one free month of cable teevee. The cable guy is coming Monday. Now, I know I am always saying I hate teevee, but heck, this is free. And besides, I am getting it just in time to enjoy the return of Headbanger's Ball.

Come on now, everybody sing! "I'm hot/sticky sweet/from my head/to my feet..."

(Via A Small Victory.)

They do it over there but we don't do it here

Um -- I think that these clothing designs are missing something. Like... clothes.

(Via Tim Blair, who only reads FHM for the articles.)

[Bonus quiz: where did I get the title from?]