perfidy

In a desperate but ultimately vain attempt to catch up on blog reading, I have been dipping into the Ministry Legion of Merit and speedreading all the fine material that has accumulated over the weeks of my neglect. One thing that jumped out at me was this post over at Texas Best Grok. John got hooked into a fascinating little speculative piece by Dan Simmons, the entirety of which can be found right here. Simmons has always been (well, since I started reading his stuff over a decade ago) one of my favorite writers. His science fiction is all sciency, his thrillers thrill, and his horror is creepy as all get out. The ease with which he slides from genre to genre is sickening to anyone who aspires to writing, and he is a storyteller with few peers. This little bit puts a creepy but all to plausible spin on something that has bothered me for nearly five years. Read it.

[wik] And also, congratulations to Mr. Lanius on his 200,000th visitor. Soon, he might be major perfidy.

All domestic dogs are descended from 9 wolves domesticated in Mongolia around 9,000 B.C. Curiously, they were all named, "Spot."

Once upon a time, actors and performers were considered no better than prostitutes. No sane or respectable person would ever imagined putting a prostitute behind a microphone to hold forth on matters of public policy, and the idea of listening to an actor do the same would have been only slightly less ridiculous. As in many other instances, we have ignored the wisdom of the past.

No particular outrage sparked this rumination, though I am sure if I looked, sometime in the last day or so, some celebrity has said something tragically ignorant or wrong-headed or offensive. If it's Alec Baldwin, he usually gets a trifecta and covers all three. (Googling… Googling… hey, today its Madonna.) You may be thinking, hey, Buckethead, you just don't like it 'cause they're all liberals and shit. Well, that plays a role, to be sure. Ignorant liberal ranting is in fact more annoying to me than ignorant conservative ranting. I hate celebrities holding forth on policy issues for precisely the same reason I hate call in talk shows. Ignorance.

If I am going to waste my time listening to someone else's opinion, I should like that opinion to be the finely honed product of a mind that has spent years, preferably decades, thinking deeply on the problem. That opinion should be a balance of hard-earned knowledge, relevant experience, nice judgment with a leavening of insight and authentic genius. That is very nearly the exact opposite of what I get listening to Tim Robbins, or some random jackhole who wants to hear his voice on the talkybox and can't be bothered to turn it off when he goes on air.

Everyone has the right to an opinion, and the right to say it. But not everyone's opinion is worth listening to. Including mine. However, I don't have Angelina Jolie's lips, chest or hips, so people aren't exactly breaking down my door for interviews. Despite the fact that those (exquisitely formed) body parts and an ability to make faces at the camera are her sole qualifications for media access to talk about whatever flits through her empty head.

This is just about the dorkiest thing I've seen since, well... ever. Captain Ed has started a group he's called the "101st Fighting Keyboardists. they've got a logo and everything.

Our friends on the port side of the blogosphere have had quite a time tossing around funny little nicknames for those of us who support the war on terror and use our blogs to express our convictions about it. We've seen the names here at CQ in the comments section -- the term "chickenhawk" has appeared more than once, and others in the blogosphere have assigned us to a unit called the 101st Fighting Keyboardists.

I've thought about that for a while, wondering what exactly about both epithets appear so fascinating to left-wing bloggers. As a middle-aged grandfather supporting a chronically ill wife, I have few options for doing my part in the war on terror. After 9/11, I spent weeks looking into different options for service while trying to balance my family obligations. Our family found out just three weeks after the attack that the Little Admiral would soon join us, and the implications of terrorism and war weighed heavily on my mind. I resolved to use the skills I had -- writing -- to make the case for fighting a forward strategy against terrorists. Eventually that led me to this blog, but in the interim I argued for a continued muscular offensive against the Islamofascists that had murdered thousands of our fellow Americans.

Is that the same as military service? Of course not. The men and women of the military do the real fighting, and we salute them and support them by supporting their mission. Milbloggers give us the best of both worlds by not only defending our nation and fighting (and beating) terrorists around the globe, but also by reporting on the fight first hand. There is honor in engaging in public debate for policies which we believe are in our nation's best interest as well. For many of us, we know that without presenting our arguments in the national forum, many in the media and the public will quickly overpower the debate and threaten the policies we feel give us the best long-term opportunity to defeat terrorism and the states that fund and shelter them.

....

That's why Frank J of IMAO, Derek Brigham of Freedom Dogs, and I have decided to create -- for real -- the 101st Fighting Keyboardists and adopt the chicken hawk as our mascot. First of all, the term "fighting keyboardist" describes our efforts pretty well, and we think the pseudo-military terminology is pretty danged amusing. Derek himself designed the logo.

....

Make of that what you will.

I mean, my esteemed coblogger Buckethead jokes about being a "Chairborne Ranger" or a member of the "Keyboard Brigade," (okay, half the time it's me calling him those things, but that fact is inconvenient to my current point so let's overlook it, mmkay?), but that's with the understanding that blogging is in no way a noble sacrifice that contributes in any way whatsoever to the actual shooting war that's going on half a world a way. Because that's the actual situation.

Anyway, hop over there and read the comments, which are totally priceless: "sign me up!" "Can I join?" "John Kerry, reporting for duty!!"

As a liberal who never trusted the Bush administration to not f*ck up there little adventure in Iraq, and who has said so publicly while simultaneously mocking the overwrought conviction of the loony fringes on each side (which evidently makes me one of the people they think can go suck it), I am frankly cowed into silent submission at the resolve and frankly incredible insight of these men, these dorks, this band of brothers. Or whatever.

Well, really it just makes me tired.

[wik] idiosynchronic of low and left (coblogger of our valued loyal reader "iamcoyote") notes something I'm grateful I didn't have to point out myself, because the fishinbarrelicious frission of the whole deal would make me feel a little dirty. That is, idiosynchronic noticed something I was trying not to notice, being the sporting and fair-minded chap that I am, namely a surely unintentional resemblance between the Chickenhawk logo and the German Eagle, a national symbol that once symbolized the stiff-necked greatness of the Empire, but which came to seem unspeakably crass circa, oh, 1946 or so. Its use by the Chairborne Rangers (unofficial motto: "We'll Beat You Down With One Hand Ti... Well, Let's Just Say The Other Hand Is Busy!") has to be the single shiningest example of AutoGodwinPwnage ever seen in the history of the internets.

[alsø wik] Dr. Sanity, now of the "Fighting Keybees," as the 101st is styling itself, want us all to know that they

stand for TRUTH, JUSTICE, and the ultimate DEFEAT OF TYRANNY. [And, that includes all of you tyrants or tyrant wannabees out there in the blogsphere who are completely without a sense of humor; and/or who take those vapid and banal exhortations for "peace" so seriously you are unable to see that you represent the greatest threat to peace and freedom in the universe. All humorless and ideological cretins can just suck it up--because we mean you!]

Oh, I got a sense of humor all right. I think all this big-talkin' steely-eyed internet resolve to fight 'splodeydopes and liberals alike through their heavy, heavy words is hilarious.

Reuters covers the impending public display of 1/10th of Mexicans demanding to be Americans here.

On the one hand, that sounds like a fine thing: all those millions, that vast multitude willing to risk so much to be one of us. On the other hand, giving ultimatums and listing among your intentions that, "America's major cities will grind to a halt and its economy will stagger" are not the way to engender sympathy for your cause. Just wanted to throw that out there, you know, in case it wasn't blatantly obvious to anyone.

Reuters calls them "pro-immigration activists"; that's who will be taking to the streets on 1 May. "Pro-immigration activists".

That's funny, because every time Lady Lethal and I had to go wrestle with the INS over some bit of her paperwork- which always cost alot of $$, not to mention lost work time and travelling expenses, and disregarding the psychic toll of dealing with cold bureaucrats- I don't recall ever seeing a "pro-immigration" activist. Not anywhere near the JFK Building, the Government Center plaza, the Red Line, or the Green Line.

That's because all the pro-immigration people were inside the building, waiting in line.

Oceania has always been at war with... ahh shit. Who'm I kidding? Here I am with a story about a new video display in development by Apple that contains image-collecting cells interlaced with the image-emitting ones, thereby permitting a fully functional two-way video screen, and all I can come up with are Yakov Smirnoff and George fricking Orwell.

Is there an office I need to report to, to have my pundit-pass torn up? Or at the very least stamped "HACK" in giant red block capitals?

[wik] Speaking of George Orwell, I just read a fascinating brace of books. First was Orwell's debut novel, Burmese Days, drawn from his experience in His Majesty's colonial service, and about the deranging effects that colonialism has on colonizer and colonized alike. Apparently Orwell had some problems with the system.

Shortly after reading that, my loving wife the librarian handed me Finding George Orwell in Burma, by Emma Larkin, an American author raised in Southeast Asia. A few years ago, Larkin returned to Myanmar in order to visit all the places that George Orwell either wrote about or himself visited while in the Service, with the notion of making a book out of the trip. Along the way she uncovered the terrible and disheartening fact that Orwell is viewed by those few intellectuals who manage to endure under Myanmar's insane regime as a veritable prophet of their misery. In the back rooms of shops, in apartments with the shutters closed, in groups of two and three so as to not require an official "gathering" permit, people meet to read, exchange, and discuss books, handing moldering paperbacks by Western authors from hand to hand, racing against time and mildew to absorb the text before the books fall to pieces or they are discovered, detained, and disappeared by the government's vast network of informants. In this sub-sub-sub culture, this demimonde of intellectual resistance, they treat 1984 as though it were the roadmap to the system that rules their world.

Being that Myanmar's military rulers do in fact intrude in thousands of ways into every moment of every person's life, spoon feed the populace "news" that advances their purposes, mandates constant public displays of love for the rulers and hatred of the enemy (both internal enemies of the state and the puppeteers that ostensibly move them from abroad) and acts vigorously and without scruple to crush out every spark of independent thought, it turns out that in Myanmar, 1984 isn't merely a chilling if slightly hokey novel for seventh-graders. It's goddamn holy truth.

Via unfogged, I give you the number one reason I'm thankful not to have been born a female hyena: "imagine giving birth through a penis."

Wait'll you read the part about the fatal tearing.

Their deep commitment to rocking your intellect as thoroughly and enthusiastically as your hole.

Dig:

There are 23 generally accepted canonical works, mostly studio but some live records too. If you take the first letter of every word in the album title and string them out, you get this, the Motorhead Power Word:

MOBAoSNStHIFAPDNMORnRNSAA1916MoDBSOSSBLELTEEWAMTBoMHLaBAI

If you record yourself saying the canonical Power Word, then play the recording backwards at 1/3 speed, you should hear, "LEMMY ROCKS YOUR HEAD AND HOLE LEMMY ROCKS YOUR HEAD AND HOLE" in a forgotten dialect of Aramaic indigenous only to a small band of Levantine pirates who, in the early 1st century, used a smallish slab of Lemmy-shaped coral as their sea lair.

But that's not the half of it.

Consider the mystical number 23. Add that to the 57 characters of the Power Word and what do you get? 80.

Next consider the album title 1916. Pretty odd that it's the only numerically-titled release, no? And why that number? Well think it through:

1+9+1+6=17.

Now add that to 80 and you get 97. 97.

Ninety-seven is Lemmy's height in inches, or a hair under 8'1.

I mean, it's stuff like that, the number games, the language games, the historical awareness...the deep and broad intellectualism that is at the core of Motorhead's music and message is what makes them unique, and allows them to kick your ass in all kinds of subtle, eye-opening ways.

All I can say is, thanks.

Only 12 percent of monetary transactions around the world involve money.

I have now taken the same quiz as my compatriots, and it is clear that, far from dying peacefully in my sleep well into my second century of life, surrounded by loved ones, I'm destined for a grisly and chillingly newsworthy end.

You scored as Gunshot. Your death will be by gunshot, probably because you are some important person or whatever. Possibly a sniper, nice, quick, clean shot to the head. Just beautiful.

What the hell? Where'd I get so many enemies?!? Guess I'd better start sitting with my back to the wall down at the local Thai/sushi joint and tiki bar that is my usual watering hole. Don't wanna die with a tall glass of Singha and a plate of o-toro sashimi in front of me. I mean, there's worse ways to go, I guess, than enjoying a plate of fatty tuna belly. I could die at MacDonald's. At least bomb or bullet is quick, right? Mebbe I better start looking for that land in the woods of Nova Scotia I've always wanted. Big fence. Mean dogs. A moat.