perfidy

Now THIS is a movie to go see! From the disclaimer at the end of the New York Times review of Clint Eastwood's film Mystic River:

"Mystic River" is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It has profanity, abundant violence and existential despair.

Existential despair!

No, but really, my compatriot brdgt (not her real name) has posted the review here, and I think you will agree it's well reviewed.

The book, by Dennis Lehane, was superb. Lehane captured the essence of working-class Massachusetts-- insular, fiercely loyal, fucked-up like a family, real-- better than any other author I've read, and early reports from the film (which was shot in Boston) say that Eastwood captured this on screen.

I can't wait! Existential despair, Boston style! And just in time for the Red Sox nation's own annual rite of existential despair, ashes-and-sackcloth wearing, unconsidered recriminations, and drunken, heartbreaking promises that next year, next yeah, Mackie, is gonna be the yeah.

Which it is.

... or at least the perfect sandwich for Scottish people. Disgusting.

The classic cheese and pickle sandwich, eaten in front of the television, has been shown to constitute the ideal sandwich, according to research carried out for British Bread Month.

A nationwide survey quizzed respondents on the ingredients and conditions of the perfect sandwich they made at home and came up with the following equation:

ps = 0.225b + 0.134c + 0.127s + 0.196f + 0.136p +0.181e

The final equation identifies the optimum thickness and type of bread (b), type and thickness of cheese (c), type and thickness of spread (s), additional filling (f), method of presentation (p), and where it should be eaten (e).

The perfect sandwich is made using strong or mature Cheddar on medium, pre-sliced round-top white bread with a thin spread of vegetable margarine, cut diagonally and eaten at home for lunch in front of the television.

Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong!

White bread: wrong! Margarine!?!??!?? WRONG! Pickle ("chutney")? Meh.

The perfect HOMEMADE sandwich consists of: thinly-sliced very well marbled medium rare roast beef (cold); paper-thin slices of red onion; paper-thin slices of European Swiss cheese; and as much brown mustard containing horseradish as you care to add; all on 2 (two) slices seeded rye bread, lightly toasted if desired. That is all.

Though I will also put in a good word for the Reuben, properly made, any sandwich of roasted vegetables on a baguette, as long as the quality of viniagrette is high, a muffaletta, and hot dogs after drinking.

Every thinking person knows that the perfect STORE-BOUGHT sandwich comes from Primanti Bros. in Pittsburgh, PA, with an honorable mention going to any one of several delicatessens in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic States.

The perfect seafood sandwich is a lobster roll, not too much mayo, hold the celery.

The perfect deadly sandwich is the kabob I had that one time in Glasgow, the one that kept me up all night long and led to a rather humilating episode the next day on the train between Newcastle and Bury St. Edmunds. I had to burn that set of clothes.

I also see, via Macaronies, that 43.6 million Americans don't have health insurance-- an increase of 2.4 million over last year. Though this is short of the 1998 high, this kind of sucks. The main cause is that employers are finding new and exciting ways to deny their workers health care (extending the part-time designation, or just flat out not having a health plan), and the secondary cause is rising unemployment.

Some, like my esteemed coblogger, see this as inherent in the system. I see this as a problem that bears addressing. Basic health care is so simple, and so important, [update: and so expensive!!] that the Good Old Liberal Try seems attractive to me in this case. What do we do? What DO we do? 
 

From the greatest website in Christendom, McSweeney's Internet Tendency:

A N   O P E N   L E T T E R
T O   C H I C A G O
P U B L I C   L I B R A R Y
D E S K   V A N D A L S .
 

BY HOLLY GRIGALUNAS

Dear Vandals,

I write in regard to your collective graffiti displayed on a study carrel — just east of the map collection and through the foreign books — in the Harold Washington branch of the Chicago Public Library. While your detailed Asian fetishes and sketches of generously-endowed hermaphrodites kept me distracted from my primary reading materials for quite some time, I thought you may benefit from a few tips that may better convey your sentiments.

Choose your writing instrument carefully. Markers and Wite-Out will do. Avoid pencil; it rubs off far too easily — "CASTRATE ALL…" what? Your ideal method may be to etch directly into the wood, perhaps with a paperclip or very sturdy ballpoint pen. Along with imbuing a rustic, almost old-timey, timbre to your voice, it may avoid any further confusion over which ethnic group gives the best head.

Secondly, bear in mind that a good majority of people are right-handed, causing most graffiti to become clotted up on the right-hand sides of desks. Writing on the left-hand side will not only set your message apart, but will add a pleasing, feng-shui effect to your canvas. Basically, if you truly want to stress that Scotty does, in fact, take it up the ass —  think left.

Finally, take heed when responding to your fellow vandals' messages. Imagine your fellow vandal has inscribed a bawdy and entirely incorrect statement in pencil, perhaps about his abnormal penis length and the amount of attractive young women who, just last night, took pleasure in every last inch. You must be ambiguous and glib in your response in the event that the initial point of contention rubs off on someone's sweaty forearm, or is lost forever in the terry recesses of the night janitor's rag. Nothing is more bewildering than a "YEAH AFTER YOU PAY THEM CAUSE YOU CAN'T GET ANY FOR FREE," accompanied by a lonesome arrow. A simple "fuck off" or "your mamma is gay" should suffice wonderfully as both a dissenting response and an independent assault.

I do hope you consider these suggestions, not only for the sake of clarity and cohesiveness, but for your own readers' faith in you and your vast affection for young pussy. 

Respectfully,
Holly Grigalunas
Chicago, IL

The world renowned Hindustan Times is reporting that:

Kuwaiti security authorities have foiled an attempt to smuggle $60 million worth of chemical weapons and biological warheads from Iraq to an unnamed European country, a Kuwaiti newspaper said on Wednesday.

A desultory google search showed no other articles on this event. Meanwhile, the long expected Kay report is expected to show no hard evidence of WMD, though many dual use facilities that could be quickly converted to evil uses - and extensive efforts to conceal those capabilities.

The Hindustan Times article came out almost a day ago, its surprising that no other news outlet has commented on it.

In related news, North Korea has three times as many nukes as we thought, and is making more.

Some recovery we're having.

The number of Americans living in poverty increased by 1.7 million last year, and the median household income declined by 1.1 percent, the Census Bureau reported today. The worsening economic conditions fell heaviest on Midwesterners and nonwhites.

It was the second straight year of adverse changes in both poverty and income, the first two-year downturn since the early 1990's.

The data, results of the Census Bureau's annual Current Population Survey, the official barometer for measuring income and poverty rates, showed that lingering negative effects of the recent recession cut across a broad swath of the population.

The official poverty rate rose to 12.1 percent in 2002 from 11.7 percent the year before, bringing to total number of people living below the poverty line to 34.6 million.

The median household earned income fell $500 over the same period to $42,400. Per capita income declined by 1.8 in 2002 to $22,794, the first decline since 1991.

I understand that poverty figures lag behind economic cycles. But add to that the continued shrinkage of the job market, the smaller-than-normal recovery in temp jobs created, and the sullen, mulish instistence of the economy not to get out of first gear for the fictional "Average American," and I get the impression that we're in the doldrums for the long haul.

A slow recovery is much better than a collapse, that much is true. But what worries me is the President's continued insistence that tax cuts will raise revenues faster than the defecit can grow. So far, this economic recovery is substantially different than all others recent in that it's much more modest and compartmentalized. Unfortunately, those recent recoveries are the ones on which the President based his numbers, when he wasn't summoning them from fantasy-land.

This is all bad news for those of us who feel that the President's economic plan is playing Russian roulette with investment rates and eventual inflation. In my unconsidered and thoroughly unprofessional opinion, the spiralling deficit, combined with the flatass nonrecovery we're in, is a bad situation to be in what with the wars on and all. Could this be the Greek-Tragedy Wheel of Fate issue that sinks Bush Jr.?

Yesterday was a day of music blogging, but since today I'm feeling vituperative, I'd like to comment on this.

Senate Republicans, bowing to what appears to be a Senate majority, said Tuesday that they had begun exploring a compromise that would require Iraq to repay at least part of the $20.3 billion in reconstruction aid the Bush administration wants to spend.

So lemme get this straight. We go in and blow hell out of their country. We find that the previous head of household left it a shithole. Said shithole isn't producing revenue fast enough to offset the cost of helping the residents of said shithole survive past age 20. Consequently, we ask the people living in said shithole, who would very much like to ascend to "hovel" or even "happy dwelling" status sooner rather than later, and who have been on the whole most accommodating to our ass-kickery, to come up with the money themselves sometime soon. The money they don't have.

Well ain't that a kick in the fucking head. Maybe the Senate should look into the possibilities of extracting a pound of flesh from each Iraqi citizen instead. Or perhaps traffick in their children. Either way is equally insulting as the actual proposal.

Twenty fucking billion. What is that? The cost of a hammer? A drop in the ocean? Thanks, Senate Democrats, for finding a new low! Thanks, Republicans, for sharing in the discovery!
 

After strenuous interrogation, summary executions, and several six-hour-long mandatory marketing meetings, the HTML gnomes who labor in the stygian depths below the Ministry compound were forced to admit that they had made a dreadful and embarrassing error. That despite having received no instructions to do so, they had utterly and completely failed to adapt the new Perfidy logo to the Perfidy category, as should have been obvious to even your average retarded Ohioan. Behold, the new Perfidy category icon:

This painful mistake is now behind us. A new team of HTML pixies has taken over supervision of the smoking industrial edifice that is the Ministry web server, devotedly feeding it sacrifices of blood and toil to keep it churning away, pounding and shaping the code into the beautiful form you see before you.

[wik] That is now the old Ministry logo, the new one is this:

The Ministry would like to thank, if not actually compensate, the thousands of young children in various third world hell holes that have labored so hard and so well to create the new perfidy gear. The Ministry would also like to commend John Karapelou for his foresightful and compassionate concern for his pets, that resulted in the wondrous Perfidy Logo now available on a variety of consumer goods. 

By clicking here or on the "Perfidious Store Thingy" link to my right, you will be instantly transported to a luscious garden of glorious capitalism. Here you may peruse the garments hand crafted by the nimble fingers of Latin American youths. Here you will see toys manufactured by Chinese criminals paying their debt to soceity. Here you find wonders made possible by your humble servant, the Ministry of Minor Perfidy. 

Shop, and buy. We insist. 

[wik] The future Ministry is considering setting up a new merch emporium. If this should come to pass, you'll see a link in the sidebar menu.

Via Rodney Welch I find the greatest thing I've seen this week, and possibly this year:

Ken Brashear's virtual drumkit.

Enjoy, kids!