perfidy

With the addition of Missouri, we are officially half way through our methodical mocking of every state in the union. Unlike most states, Missouri pitched in all by itself to get this list going. Three of the mottoes below are real, actual, authentic state mottoes. They're placed together. Two kudo units to the person who can pick them out.

• Missouri Loves Company
• Drivers Wanted
• Proud Home of Renowned Wordsmiths T. S. Eliot and Yogi Berra
• The Shower Me State
• We're better than Illinois
• Gateway to Kansas
• Your Federal Flood Relief Tax Dollars at Work
• Someday, we’ll finish our giant McDonald’s sign
• The Lead State
• The Pennsylvania of the West
• The Puke State
• The Blow Me State
• The I'll-show-you-mine-if-you-show-me-yours state
• We’re not stubborn, just thorough
• Mother of the West. Well, mother of something
• At least we've got our teeth ... mostly
• We’re like West Virginia, but, you know, wester
• Home of more cool shit than Iowa
• Yes, Kansas City is really in Missouri
• We're giving Kansas City back to Kansas
• The best damn state in the lower central midwest
• Like Utah, but flatter and less fun
• We make New Jersey look cool
• Come for the… ah, sheeit, don’t bother
• West Appalachia
• We take 'show me yours and I'll show you mine' to a whole new level, with our sisters
• Home of the biggest goddamned earthquakes, ever
• No, you show me

My wife commonly associates bacteria and viruses on food with sickness. She gets all squirmy whenever I, in the course of preparing a meal, touch raw meat and then vegetables. Were she Jewish, I think that Mrs. Buckethead would be very comfortable indeed with Kosher food handling practices. Myself, I feel that heat kills anything that my stomach won't, and don't worry too much. Food researchers have recently come up with a couple innovations that will on the one hand make Mrs. Buckethead more comfortable, and on the other give her the heebidy-jeebidies.

The first innovation is a newly FDA-approved viral additive for hot dogs and sausages and cold cuts. The viruses, in solution, are sprayed on the meat of your choice, whereupon they hunt down and kill the bad bacteria that live on, and feed off of our beloved ground meat products. When injested, these are the bacteria that give us tummy aches, or even kill us. The first preparation of six viruses targets the bacteria that causes Listeria, an illness that sickens 2500 Americans a year, and kills 500. We may assume that further viral add-ons are in the works.

Our second innovation is a special concoction of bacteria which will be added to gum, toothpaste and mouthwash. It seems that Strepptococcus mutans, or S. Mutans is a cause of tooth decay. Our new ally is another bacterium, a new strain of lactobacillus called L. anti-caries, forces S. Mutans to clump together, preventing them from becoming attached to the tooth surface. Sweet, maybe now I won't have to floss. Researchers are also looking into enlisting other bacteria to fight body odor. Naturally, these critters will be be applied to the underarm by means of your deodorant stick.

The beautiful thing about these things is that we won't even notice they're there. Silent multitudes of our microscopic minions will do battle for our snausages, in our pits, and in the dark moist crevices of our mouths. A fifth column of single- and sub-cellular agents will infiltrate and sabotage the work of the evil bacteria, foiling their communist plots to make us sick, smelly, and gap-toothed. Sadly, the collateral damage of this effort will eliminate the population of Mississippi.

One can only hope that this effort will succeed, and expand. Imagine the possibilities! By inducing intramural conflict amongst the bacteria and viruses of the world, we will divert the attention of those malevolent viral and bacterial armies that make our lives, well, bad. Our newly healthy, odor free, and glisteningly white lives will of course come at the cost of uncounted trillions of deaths. But when has that stopped us before?

We return to our state mockery after a brief hiatus. We had to conserve our strength, because Mississippi is amongst the most deserving of the several states when it comes to mockery. Despite enlisting the aid of others, we feel that even with all the fine mockery below, we have not truly done Mississippi justice. You are cordially invited to join the pile-on in the comments. Let the ridicule begin!

• The Redneck and Peckerwood State
• Come Feel Better About Your Own State
• Come check out our history ... then could you read it to us? [thanks, Cat]
• Come see the past of American racial relations
• Don’t let the sun set on you in our state, N… ah sheeit, that ain't legal no more
• Fucking Boll Weevils
• I’m goin to Jackson, not gonna mess around
• There’s a reason the Blues were born here
• Keeping Louisiana from being last in *every* quality of life category
• We're lucky we can spell it
• Why would you want to come here?
• Proud home of musical greats Conway Twitty and Lance “I’m Gay” Bass
• Raise 'Em Up Right - God n Guns!
• Where Cotton was King
• The red headed stepchild of the United States
• Cotton pickin'? Them’s fightin' words
• The New Jersey of the south
• The end result of generations of careful inbreeding
• America’s premier hurricane destination!
• Where poverty isn’t just a state of mind
• The easiest state to identify on Wheel of Fortune
• George Washington never slept here
• Don’t Miss Mississippi!
• Magnolia trees suck, and so do we
• The south will rise again! (We just hope the Grand Army of the Republic won’t, too.)
• Big Muddy
• Don't even *think* about it, Chester!
• Just because we venerate the Ten Commandments doesn't mean we read them
• The Mud Cat state, because catfish is smarter than us
• Only the second poorest state! Woohoo!
• We're hardon Crime
• Foiling Spelling Bees contestants for nearly 200 years
• Home of the Great Wall of Mississippi
• The Lynching State
• The upholstered furniture capital of the world
• Oh, yeah, and Elvis is from Mississippi

[wik] Bonus slogans!

• Like Alabama looking in a mirror
• Don't forget, Mississippi has Graceland Too!
• Finest audiobook collection in the USA!
• Not dumm, jes' lade bak
• Boil it and call it cuisine

"Is it bigger than a breadbox?"

"Probably. What the fuck is a breadbox?"

For anyone needing to scratch their naval aviation itch, peep Google Earth's imagery of the Intrepid Museum. Just scroll up the West Side Highway into the West 40s until you see the building laying in the water with the jets on it. That'll be the Intrepid. Resolution is pretty good, even cranked down to max. Clearly visible are an SR-71, F-14, F-4, other carrier stuff; at least one MiG product; and various and sundry helicopters.

Google Earth doesn't have a 3D simulation for the carrier proper, which rather understates its size. I drove past it once; it towers over the road below and looks a helluva lot closer than the 100 or so feet the map suggests. It seems quite insane, really, to be tooling along the west side and suddenly seeing what looks to be a huge warship nuzzling Manhattan, and then to realize that in fact that's precisely what it is.

This week's Forgotten Punchline was made possible by a grant from Cthulhu's Own Tentacle Salve and Beak Balm. For the unholy irritation caused by dry, cracked appendages, summon the Unholiest: Cthulhu's Own.

Further support was provided by Krill. Krill: Wild Rice of the Briny Deep. With Legs.

Forthwith, today's forgotten punchline:

"So the cowboy drops his pants and says, 'Lady, this just ain't your day'".

Two Fox journalists were kidnapped Monday in Gaza. The Palestinians have, apparently, vowed to find the two journalists. Palestinian President Abbas and Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh have said that Security Forces are hunting for the two kidnapped reporters as we speak. Somewhat ominously,

The prime minister assured the Fox News representatives that Palestinian security forces would use all their power to "put an end to it soon," said government spokesman Ghazi Hamad said, without elaborating.

This is utter, unrelieved and irremediable crap. I put more credence in OJ Simpson's claim to be searching for the real killers on the golf courses of America than in the promises of the Palestinian "leadership" that they will find the real kidnappers. Political theater, of a particularly tawdry, played-out and tiresome kind.

Or at least I do. In between inane-but-cleverly-crafted spam pushing the latest pump and dump stock (It's on the Pink Sheets now, but Honest! It could be the next Exxon!), I get the occasional email message that doesn't intend to offend, but still does, all the same.

Like this nugget, peristaltically placed in my inbox within the last hour, from Grassfire.org:

Despite a truce to end the current fighting, lasting peace in the Middle East will never take hold so long as anti-Semitic Islamic leaders continue calling for the elimination of Israel.

But that isn't the only battle front facing Israel. They are also battling the liberal media who seems to accept the spin that this latest battle is about some ancient claim to land--when in reality the fighting is based on a hatred of Christians and Jews.

A look at the media coverage during the incursion underscores that fact. Doctored photos and misleading reports have all found their way into mainstream
reporting.

That is why Grassfire, along with our partner the Media Research Center launched a national petition supporting Israel against these anti-Semitic attacks.
Over the next 30 days, we want to rally 75,000 "Friends of Israel" petitions to present to the Israel Embassy. Click here to sign:(link expunged)

It's not clear to me whom Grassfire is accusing of "anti-Semitic attacks" - I know it's either the various Muslims, Islamic leaders, the press, all three, or someone else entirely.

And when I saw the note, I got mildly irked, possibly at the imprecision of their rationale for requesting an electronic "signature" on a truly meaningless "document".

First off, as strange as it sounds, even as I type it, nobody is attacking Jews, per se. They might be attacking Zionists, and are definitely attacking Israelis, but I'm quite comfortable asserting that neither the press, the more murderous and adventuresome of the Islamists, nor the area's governments, is attacking "Semites".

The actions of the aggressors in the current unpleasantness are distinctly terroristic, distinctly anti-Israel, and reek of "please, kick my ass", but they're not anti-Semitic, because if they were, then there's a chance they'd be killing some of themselves, too. Neither, then, are the noticeably biased (against Israel and, by extension, the US) reports in the popular press. There's anti-American and anti-Israeli froth in full flower, but to call it anti-Semitic is both lazy and unhelpful.

The world's made up of two types of people: Those who believe the world's made up of two types of people and... No, scratch that.

If the world could be said to truly be made of two types, one possible classification would be those who dislike anything Israel or the US does to protect itself and those who don't. Another possibility would be a preference for "the little guy", no matter how cynical and childishly lame his protestations of correctness. Reflexively being against the US or Israel is not a new phenomenon, and neither is a preference for David (ironic, that) over Goliath.

But an email trying to get my knickers in a twist by playing on some silly-ass claim of anti-Semitism shows a lack of intellectual seriousness on Grassfire's part, and on the part of those who share their lazy methods of eliciting support.

• I prefer that the attacked be allowed to defend themselves, vigorously, and that if they happen to be in the right, they prevail.
• I prefer that opportunistic militants who play with fire get burned, preferably badly enough that they stop playing with fire.
• I prefer that the weaker-constitutioned nations of the world desist in their (successful, it would seem) shaming of Israel into a cease fire whose purpose is solely to allow Hizb'allah to rearm, in the manner dictated by the prophet himself (piss be upon him), who thought truces were good ways to lick one's wounds and live to fight the same fight another day, or later on the same day.
• I prefer the simple, unvarnished truth in the reporting that I read, rather than being told, obliquely or not, what I should think of a given situation. If I care what someone thinks, rather than what they saw, I'll read the op-ed page (and I do)
• I'd prefer that "we" could stop pretending to be shocked when propaganda is used as a tool of war, and that instead, when a non-party to such a war intentionally spreads propaganda, they should be punished in the marketplace of reputation, ideas, or business

And I'd prefer that those allegedly well-intentioned souls who seem to think that 75,000 imaginary signatures on an imaginary document will do fuck-all for the Israeli people go find some better use of their time and my mailbox. Such an imaginary signature has no effect on any of the things about which they've gotten their bowels in an uproar.

The Ministry is almost half done with milking this topic, now that we have reached the cold, wet and vaguely Swedish state of Minnesota.

• Gopher Gopher Gopher Gopher Gopher Gopher Gopher Gopher
• We’re the best damn state in the upper central Midwest.
• What Do You Mean We Talk Funny?
• You could live here, but why?
• No, I’m not the Swedish Chef
• 10,000 Lakes and 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Mosquitoes
• Ya, Sure
• We’re done with “North Star State.” From now on, we’re the Polaris Province.
• Moderation in all things, except for lakes. And snow. And silly accents…
• The striped gopher is an insignificant animal with a destructive nature; useless and undignified. That’s why it’s our mascot.
• Not Sweden, but we act like it
• At least we’re not New Jersey
• Sure beats Canada
• Star of the North, my ass
• Land of 7,000 lakes and 3,000 man-made ponds
• Come for the bitter winter cold, stay for the sweltering summer heat.
• America’s first line of defense against Vikings
• Proud home of Snoopy and that annoying fuck Garrison Keillor
• Land of 11,842 Lakes
• The Lakota Sioux word “mnishota” means milky water, or semen.
• We have a bigger mall than you
• Land of the land icebergs
• Those guys in Fargo lived in ND, okay?
• Like spelling Mississippi, but with n’s
• We support racial understanding and tolerance, except towards the god-damned, herring-eating Norwegian scum.
• We're better than Wisconsin
• Lutefisk!
• Our contribution to American Political life: Walter Mondale
• We piss in the Mississippi, just to make New Orleans suffer
• More than just whining about the cold. Okay, just whining about the cold.
• The Scandinavia of North America
• Actually, if you count swimming pools, it’s a half million lakes

I'm perhaps overly sensitive to the inanity of the supposed security at our nation's airports, having seen too many instances of Barney Fife syndrome on the part of puffed up losers at various airports. While I'm sure there are many competent screeners, they all seem to work shifts that keep us coming in contact. My typical encounter with the breed makes me certain that they had three choices: TSA, some form of work requiring a white paper hat and a name tag, or one or another variety of animal husbandry. Sadly, in each case, they didn't read past the first item.

Watching these folks, in fits of mild sadism, drag uniformed pilots (to say nothing of blue-haired grandmothers and crying 6 year olds) through baseless subjugation has always struck me as misguided and fruitless.

But, on a recent trip through this month's opinings from Bruce Schneier, I saw another of his recent essays (in addition to the item I've added as an update to the drug-related post below). This one is entitled "Focus on terrorists, not tactics". I found it an interesting read, and commend it to your attention.

Key points include:

• Everything you know about airport security, you can pretty much ignore as a device to keep you safe
• No fly lists, secondary screening, prohibition of fingernail clippers, Richard Reid inspired shoe-checks, and the rest, had nothing to do with foiling the plot at Heathrow
• Neither did banning box-cutters
• Old-fashioned intelligence work, however, did
• The resulting intensified security measures are prudent
• But will cease to be, shortly

His point, well and succinctly articulated, is that strategy is more important than tactics. Standard fare, really, but he expounds:

It's easy to defend against what the terrorists planned last time, but it's shortsighted. If we spend billions fielding liquid-analysis machines in airports and the terrorists use solid explosives, we've wasted our money. If they target shopping malls, we've wasted our money. Focusing on tactics simply forces the terrorists to make a minor modification in their plans. There are too many targets -- stadiums, schools, theaters, churches, the long line of densely packed people before airport security -- and too many ways to kill people.

Security measures that require us to guess correctly don't work, because invariably we will guess wrong. It's not security, it's security theater: measures designed to make us feel safer but not actually safer.

Airport security is the last line of defense, and not a very good one at that. Sure, it'll catch the sloppy and the stupid -- and that's a good enough reason not to do away with it entirely -- but it won't catch a well-planned plot. We can't keep weapons out of prisons; we can't possibly keep them off airplanes.

(emphasis mine)

Given the choices of capitulation, constant and counterproductive "pretend" security measures, or applying a bit of brainpower and shoe leather to the problem while still treating it like a life-or-death chess game, I'd choose the latter. And not just because I have a fondness for cheesy spy thrillers.