perfidy

OTB summarizes reactions to Lileks' post about Salaam Pax...no sir, Lileks doesn't like him.

Lileks requires abasement from those he has helped, apparently...and is unable to see the irony in the righteous anger derived from reading about the deaths of _three_ of his fellow Minnesotans, who gave their _lives_ helping people who've suffered the deaths of hundreds of thousands of their citizens, at the hand of a madman, and several thousand more deaths at the hands of their liberators.

Are the Iraqis permitted melancholy? Is a bittersweet taste not in their apple-pie deliverance?

Lileks demonstrates with those words that in his mind, each of those American lives was worth a few hundred, or a few thousand, Iraqi lives. And when confronted with this observation, in his opinion, an Iraqi may not have outwardly say anything to an American other than "Thank you, Sir. My Mother died in a bombing for us all, Sir. My heart is full of joy."

Sounds goddamn communist to me.

Freedom of speech is a bitch, ain't it? Get used to the ingratitude. There's a lot more coming.

What, did you think that everyone would magically start liking you? Grow up.

As if being from Beaver County, PA (home of Leslie's Big Beaver, the best durned truck stop west of Breezewood) was't bad enough, now you probably have hepatitis too.

you could always have it worse.

but regardless of that or of any considerations of basic human decency, I have to turn your attention to this week's edition of Photoshop Phriday on somethingawful.com.

It's about funny-books!

One final note: if you wish to link to an image from SA, never, ever just pirate it off their servers. Save it to your home server instead; you'll be glad you did. Buckethead will take this notice as a dig at him, but the fact is, it's a public-health matter of the highest importance.

The Ministry would like to extend its gratitude to Minister Buckethead. His absence from these annals has been noted with regret, but the loss of his insights here is more than equalled by his subaltern heroics these last few weeks. Hundreds of gnomes and day-laborers gave their lives so that his mission could be a success, and their sacrifices were not in vain. His mission may be secret, but its outcome will visible from low earth orbit very shortly.

Once the burns heal-- and they are healing nicely-- and that nasty business with the Yemeni Foreign Service is cleared up, we expect Minister Buckethead to return to active duty with gusto and verve.

Or else.

That is all.

Just a quick note: the concert I went to on Friday, "Fula Flute" was pretty killer. I'm a sucker for West African music anyway, and this was a top-notch group.

More on this later, but I had to plug them briefly now.

It's a dweam, wiffin a dweam.

Y'know? I keep hearing from cultural conservatives about how marriage is a sacred institution representing the eternal love between man and woman for the purposes of increase of the species, and how that will be ruined-- ruined! for everyone if humasexashuls get a piece of the action. Marriage is the final bulwark of goodness, decency, and God-fearing American patriotism against the forces of Mammon, Godlessness, dissipation, and sin.

Oh rilly? So, letting gays marry (or unite civilly) would drag the good name of matrimony through the pigpen?

I think that's been taken care of just fine already. Consider the following:

Just this week the Supreme Judicial Court ruled that there's nothing in the Massachusetts Constitution that says anything about forbidding gay people from marrying. Very nice, I say! Let's see where that takes us. I felt the decision was well-argued, clear-headed, and sensibly construed. Reasonable people may differ as to the implications, but that's another story.

And then yesterday Massachusetts' legislature proved that the Bay State is allergic to doing ANYTHING 100% right, when it passed a bill which simultaneously permits communities to allow Sunday liquor sales and bans smoking in all public places statewide.

That's right: good-bye blue laws, hello brown laws! That is, provided the bill becomes statute. You can marry who you'd like, but NO SMOKING.

For a real insight into the tangled world of half-measures and entrenched interests that is Massachusetts' political landscape, go read the article. I guarantee your eyes will glaze over by the time you get to this part, which decisively proves that Massachusetts is collectively insane:

"In 1990, the Massachusetts Legislature relaxed alcohol rules to allow Sunday sales between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day and in cities and towns within 10 miles of New Hampshire and Vermont, which permit Sunday sales. Border legislators determined to preserve that competitive advantage helped doom a House attempt to lift the ban last month. But the measure was presented as a separate bill, and the idea's inclusion in a broader measure helped push it through last night."

[wik] I should note here that I support smoking bans on personal grounds (I don't like to smell like smoke, the bartender black-lung question, etc.) but don't really like it on libertarian grounds. I'm real conflicted and stuff.

[alsø wik] And don't give me that crap about secondhand smoke being harmless. Bullshit. Bullshit. Bullshit.

Scuttlebutt has it that Fox is going to start making new episodes of "The Family Guy" after the DVD release of the series sold more than 1 million copies.

Sweet!

And, uh, hey... if anybody was thinking of juuuuust the right Christmas/Chanukah/Ramadan/Kwanzaa/Festivus gift for ol' Johno... heh... I heard that Family Guy is out on DVD...

A power company in Akron has been ruled responsible for the Great Blackout Media Event Of 2003.

"the company's failure to adequately trim trees along the lines ''was the common cause'' for the [blackout.]"

Two thoughts:

1) Ohio: Florida North.

2) Seriously folks, if trees can bring the nation from Detroit to DC to its knees, we have a shit-lot of rethinking to do about our national power grid. Good thing there's a strong, decisive energy bill passing through Congress right now that will solve... wha? What's that you say?? It's fatter than John Goodman and weaker than Michael Jackson's cheekbones? Oh. Dang.